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TRANSCRIPT Ep. 22 | Taurus New Moon and Venus Gone Wild

Transcript: Episode 022 | Taurus New Moon and Venus Gone Wild

April 20, 2020

Show notes here

Jen: Welcome to the Big Sky Astrology podcast, with April Elliott Kent and me, producer and cohost Jen Braun. Hey friends, Jen here! Today is April 20th, 2020. And of course, sheltering in place 2000 miles away from me is my good buddy, astrologer April Elliott Kent. Hi, April.

April: Hi Jen!

Jen: How are you doing? You’ve had kind of a rough week.

April: Yes, I had a rough week, yes. But a lot of people have. And I’m starting to get into the groove of the sheltering in place thing and we’re well stocked. We have tons of pasta in our pantry, which makes me sleep better at night.

Jen: Very good.

April: I had this terrible moment a couple of weeks ago where it looked like elbow macaroni was a thing of the past.

Jen: That caused panic in your world.

April: It really did. April’s got to have her pasta and plenty of salty snacks, and things are good.

Jen: Oh good.

April: So we’re really well set in the sheltering-in-place department.

Jen: Do you have many books in your house?

April: We do have many books. Yes, that makes us sort of old-timey and old-fashioned in this digital age. But I do have on my Kindle, my very favorite novelist Anne Tyler just released her latest book…

Jen: Oh…

April: …last week and it just showed up. I had pre-ordered it and forgotten. And it was on my Kindle like magic, so I was so happy. It’s a good time to be a book reader, because when you travel you can either take hard copies of books with you or you just carry your little Kindle with all your books.

Jen: And a lot of people are sheltering in place right now and it’s nice to have books in the house.

April: Books are good friends.

Jen: We are coming upon World Book Day on Thursday, April 23rd. Did you know that?

April: Well, I only knew about it because you told me about it before we start recording frankly. And this epic event, we do like our holidays on this podcast, but that one had passed me by. But what it brought to mind for me is when I was a kid, the best gift that I got was a set of world book encyclopedias from my mom.

Jen: Do you still have them?

April: No, I wish I did. I think they were stored in a garage and got wet or something. I loved them in the pre-Wikipedia age. It was so amazing to be able to crack open these little world books in their red leatherette covers and…

Jen: …pick a letter, open it up and see where you land.

April: Today, I would use it as an Oracle. I would open it up and see what jumped out at me and figure that was my Oracle for the day. Did you have encyclopedias?

Jen: Yes. We had encyclopedias growing up and my parents still have a set of encyclopedias sitting on their shelves. It reminds me of the seventies, eighties…

April: Good times…

Jen: … if you had to do a report at school or something, you could crack open whatever letter you needed and take a look at the subject.

April: You didn’t have to go to the library.

Jen: Yes. Super cool.

April: You had it right there at your disposal.

Jen: That’s right. I was spoiled.

April: I was trying to remember how I ended up getting the encyclopedias. I must have been perceived as the academic of the family. Maybe she was just picking up on all my ninth house planets. I don’t know. But, boy. I love them. I treasure them. So that’s immediately what spring mind.

Jen: Awesome.

April: So that is our World Book Day.

Jen: Yes.

April: All right.

Jen: Well my friend, what time is it, do you think?

April: I think it’s time for, Moonwatch!

Jen: I’m going to play it!

April: Play it!

April: Jen could have an entire outtake reel of us giggling about the Moonwatch theme, which we’re not even hearing as we record, but we’re imagining at it. Our imaginations are really going very richly here. This week, we have another New Moon. It’s hard to believe we’re there again, my friend.

Jen: Yes. I know.

April: And this is a New Moon on April 22nd, the day before World Book Day, I might add.

Jen: Oh yeah.

April: At 3° 24 minutes of Taurus.

Jen: You know, last time we had a Last Quarter Moon and you talked about the song “Last Quarter Moon in a Ten-Cent Town.” Well, whenever we have a New Moon, I always think of that Duran Duran song, “New Moon on Monday.” Do you know that one?

April: No. Let’s hear a snippet.

Jen: Well, I’ll link it in the show notes.

April: I thought you were going to bust a melody!

Jen: No, I’m not going to sing it.

April: You are feeling a little bit shy about that? I know you can sing! You were singing before we got started. Duran Duran, now that is in my wheelhouse, that was my era!

Jen: Ah! Oh my gosh!

April: Well, not Duran Duran specifically, but the eighties… I was in my twenties. I was going to clubs, that was my era.

Jen: I loved Duran Duran.

April: They were the ones with the hair, right? No, it was Flock of Seagulls.

Jen: Simon Le Bon…

April: Oh, I can picture them now. Yes.

Jen: Nick Rhodes…

April: Jen?

Jen: Yes?

April: Did you have a poster of them on your wall? I’m just getting that vibe.

Jen: I had 100 posters of them on my wall. And not only that, but I also loved Culture Club and Boy George.

April: Oh God. Who didn’t?

Jen: And I had posters, literally – I’m not kidding – you could not see an inch of space on my walls. In fact, I wish that my mom was on right now just for one minute so that she could talk about my middle school bedroom walls and how they were plastered.

April: Feel free to go off and record a little snippet with her.

Jen: Okay. Yes.

April: Just put it in post-production. I would love to hear about that.

Jen: I’ll see what I can do…

April: I was really strongly getting that poster vibe from you as you’re talking about that. Man, I love eighties music. I love it. And I was an eighties girl. You know the big hair and the shoulder pads and the leg warmers…

Jen: Neon colors. And “Frankie say relax.” And you had the relax sweatshirt…

April: Yes, that was my era. I love that. Aw, you’re taking me back…

Carol: This is mom, Jen’s mom, Carol.

Jerry: Jerry Braun.

Carol: Playing Jen’s favorite song from high school.

Jerry: We used to listen to it a lot.

Carol: All I have to do is hear the words “Boy George” and I remember Jen’s bedroom.

Jerry: It was quite a room.

Carol: You know what? After we talked yesterday, I looked Boy George up. He’s still alive.

Jen: Yes.

Carol: He’s on “The Voice” in Australia. And then I went back to find “Karma Chameleon,” which was of course your favorite song. Because your bedroom, Jen, was covered wall-to-wall on four walls. I don’t think there was an inch of paint anywhere in that room that wasn’t covered with a picture of Culture Club and Boy George and Duran Duran.

I did like the song “Karma Chameleon.” I mean I liked the bounciness, I liked the tune. I actually heard the lyrics, but I didn’t understand what he was really talking about at the time.

But I do now. “Karma Chameleon” is about somebody not living their true life. It’s about living a fake life and paying for it in your karma. But when I listen to these lyrics now, it’s very, very insightful. It makes me realize that if you’re not true to yourself, the karma is going to catch up with you… if you’re a chameleon. Which Jen, you were always a true person, you were always true to yourself. And I thought maybe that’s what’s connected you to this song.

Whenever I hear about Boy George, I think about your bedroom. I wish I had taken pictures, but back in the eighties we didn’t have digital photography where you were snapping a picture of everything that went on around you. So I do not have any pictures of that bedroom, but God, I’ll never forget it.

Carol: That was really, really amazing that you did that. And we never made you take it down. I don’t know. It was your room and you were a good kid, so I was okay with it.

Would you like to hear a little more music before we leave?

Jerry: Here comes the music. Love you, honey.

Jen: Love you, Dad.

Carol: Love you.

Jen: Love you. Bye for now.

Carol: Bye bye.

April: Well, getting back to the New Moon, which is where this all started… the Sabian symbol for this New Moon is, “The rainbow’s pot of gold.” And doesn’t that sound hopeful?

Jen: I love that.

April: Yes.

Jen: I just love that.

April: Because it’s not so much about the rainbow even, but the promised gold at the end of it. And Taurus as we were talking about before, is kind of about riches. It’s what we own, it’s what we possess, but it’s not necessarily money. It can be money. But it’s more the sense of really appreciation for what we do have. That is how I’m reading this New Moon symbol, that that is the work of this New Moon or the promise of this New Moon to be appreciative of what we have. We talked about that last week as the Sun was going into Taurus.

Jen: Yes, we did.

April: So this is the New Moon at that point.

Jen: And I think about how you can’t touch a rainbow. And if you chase after it and you try to catch it, it’ll disappear. So you just have to enjoy the beauty from where you are.

April: Yes. Good point. It’s not something you’re going after, it’s something you’re appreciating.

Jen: Exactly.

April: This New Moon is – despite being in Taurus which is pretty mellow – is in a pretty close conjunction with Uranus, which is anything but mellow. And square Saturn. So it’s a pretty volatile New Moon chart for all that it’s in Taurus and for all that it has this pretty lovely Sabian symbology.

The Sun is square Saturn the day before the New Moon on April 21st, exactly at midnight here on the West coast. And then it makes a conjunction to Uranus later in the week on April 26th at 2:00 AM.

At the time of the New Moon, if we cast a chart for the moment that the New Moon is exact, we would see the Sun and the Moon together very close to Uranus and square Saturn… just not exact quite yet. What it’s really doing is playing up this growing tension between Saturn and Uranus, which is going to be one of the next big planetary combinations that we see – more in 2021.

Jen: Okay.

April: Right now, as soon as Saturn went into Aquarius, it came into orb of starting to apply to that square aspect, that conflict aspect with Uranus. And the two planets already essentially intrinsically are in conflict.

Jen: Yes.

April: Because Saturn’s a rule-maker and Uranus is a rule-breaker. So they already have a little bit of a fractious relationship. And then you put them square each other at 90°.

We talked last week about modalities and we talked about when planets are in signs that have the same modality that they tend to be in conflict because they want to play the same role. Saturn is in Aquarius, which is a fixed sign; Uranus is in Taurus – another fixed sign. So they have that level of conflict between them.

Basically we think of Aquarius as wanting to just break rules, but Saturn always wants to create a structure, create rules. It just wants to do it in an Aquarian way or around Aquarian concepts. But as it squares Uranus, there is a conflict. And what we’re hearing more and more, the longer that shelter in place and quarantine goes on, we’re starting to hear a conflict coming up in people’s discourse around, “Are we overdoing it with the sheltering in place? Was it necessary to bring the entire world to a stop?”

There’s a lot of disagreement about it regardless of where you stand in this argument. Because it’s a conflict between safety and rules, and taking care of the collective – which is Saturn in Aquarius. And Uranus, which always says, “Don’t fence me in. I want to be able to be free to do what I want to do.”

So having the two in conflict really speaks of, that’s the energy of this week. As we start to see that discussion grow more and more strong and more and more a part of the public discourse, I think.

Jen: Okay.

April: On the surface, that’s what’s going on with this New Moon. The New Moon, again, it’s at the beginning of a new lunar cycle. It says “This is the seed that we are planting for the month ahead and it’s a seed of how to find satisfaction in your life, and how to make sure you have what it is that you need.” Lest we forget there are many, many people right now that do not have what they need and are really suffering and are really looking down the road at fairly desperate times ahead financially. Very small business owners who don’t necessarily qualify for assistance from their state or the federal government. It’s certainly impacting at my level, people who are independent practitioners of some kind and having a business.

So this is the New Moon where we all say, “Okay, what is going to make us all truly safe, truly secure?” Which is what Taurus wants. While the conflict rages between Saturn and Uranus and how much restriction is too much? How much is appropriate? What’s needed? What isn’t? And it’s just the push/pull of that argument.

Jen: Yes, right on.

April: So anyway, we had a couple of things we wanted to talk about today with regard to Venus.

Jen: Yes.

April: We already talked about it slowing down to go retrograde. You pointed out that Venus is what we call “out of bounds” which sounds also very Uranian. Between April 2nd and June 1st. “Venus, you are out of bounds!”

April: What happens is the earth has particular path around the Sun. The Sun from our perspective appears to be going along a particular path, with the fixed stars as its backdrop. We call this band of fixed stars the ecliptic. And when a planet in its declination, so in other words, how far it is North or South of the equator by latitude… when it exceeds those boundaries, the usual boundary limits of the ecliptic… when it gets up above 23° 27 minutes to be very specific… then we say that it’s out of bounds. It’s outside the boundary limits of the Sun’s apparent orbit along the ecliptic. The symbolism of a planet that is out of bounds is that it’s transcending restraints. It doesn’t act the way we would normally expect it to behave. It is literally beyond the pale. And it is very Uranian to me.

Now, I’m not an expert in this. We will go ahead and in the show notes, we’ll link to a couple of essays by other people who really think about this a lot, work with it a lot and apply it to their client work. But it’s enough for us to know, coming into this week, that Venus is in a very unusual condition right now. And that gives the New Moon an unusual an Uranian condition. Because Venus rules Taurus, and the New Moon is in Taurus.

Jen: I see.

April: So it speaks of that uncertainty that we’re feeling. These are times that are beyond the pale. And especially when it comes to how we’re relating to each other, how we’re having to do it in an unusual way. Everybody’s meeting online and keeping distance from each other. And also that thing about the economy and what are we going to see with that? We’re in kind of uncharted territory that I think the Venus out of bounds speaks to as well.

Jen: So another way to think about out of bounds then is, if you take the Earth’s equator and project it out into space… and planets would have to be within that perimeter?

April: Yes. Within 23° North or South of that equator. Does that help?

Jen: Yes.

April: It’s really defined by the Sun’s latitude at the solstices. So it is extremely high or extremely low as it will be.

Jen: Aha. Okay.

April: So basically a planet that is outside those limits is kind of like on its own. If a child leaves home or a young person leaves home, leaves the safety of the community and the prescribed behaviors of that community, then they gain freedom to do as they wish, but they lose the security and the safety and the protection of the community. And if we think of it as being defined by the Sun at the solstices, those are the parental signs. The Sun is in the parental signs at the solstices, Cancer and Capricorn. So if you get beyond mom and dad and you’re launching out on your own, then it has its pluses and its challenges as well.

Jen: Yes.

April: People right now who are going against the tide of public opinion in whatever way are really reflecting this Venus out-of-bounds, beyond-the-pale symbolism.

Jen: Exactly. Thank you.

April: Now, Venus is also getting ready to square Neptune. You can go back to Episode 21 and hear more of our discussion about Venus slowing down as it gets ready to turn retrograde. The combination of Venus with Neptune together is the concept of: Are we seeing our relationships clearly? Are we clear about our own worth? And it reflects this energy right now of: We really don’t know where things are going economically because Venus is also about money. And the square always says we are fighting against something. We’re not just accepting it as it is. We’re trying to get more and more clarity or movement on it. So it will be exact on May 3rd, May 20th, July 27th. But we’re just kind of looking ahead to it now since Venus is so prominent this week.

And it is about trying to get clarity on these things. And it’s not that we’re necessarily able to. But it’s kind of about disillusionment sometimes with relationships in particular. It can be, “I really thought I knew this person. And now, oh, I’m suddenly realizing something about them I didn’t know.”

Jen: That something’s not meeting your expectations.

April: Yes. Your expectations and your ideas of who the person is or how they should be or how just how you thought they were. And we’re seeing a certain amount of that in this time as well because it’s not the good and easy times that reveal people’s character so much as the difficult times. This is a difficult moment in history.

Jen: Yes.

April: So we’re seeing things in people, I’m seeing it amongst some of my closest friends, disagreements about things. And just suddenly overnight, the relationships seem very changed.

Jen: Do you mean you and your friend… or your friend who’s…?

April: Friends with each other.

Jen: Yes. Okay.

April: Yes. I’m lucky to be in pretty good shape in that regard right now.

Jen: Yes.

April: But that is Venus with Neptune. It’s going to be an interesting time. And because Venus is getting ready to turn retrograde, that’s when we have these protracted transits between the planets where you get three distinct aspects between them. Because again, it makes the aspect the first time, then it turns retrograde and it will aspect it again, turns direct and does it one more time.

Jen: Exactly.

April: This is very much the flavor of this upcoming Venus retrograde period: It’s about this square to Neptune, getting clear, seeing things clearly.

Jen: Okay.

April: I’m doing a lecture for an online conference called “Breaking Down the Borders.” That was actually the very first online astrology conference. And this is not till November, but I’m just kind of putting a plug for it.

Jen: Plug away.

April: Yes, they’re having this early-bird registration pricing on it. Then the fun thing about this conference – in some ways – is instead of paying one enormous registration fee, you actually pay for each lecture individually. If you want, you can just sign up for my lecture, which is called “Saints and Suckers: Neptune in Relationships.”

Jen:

April: So, it’s why I kind of wanted to plug it now. It really kind of suits what we’re talking about here.

Jen: Yes.

April: I’m going to be speaking on November 7th at 3:30 in the afternoon Pacific Time until 5:00. And the early-bird registration is only $20. It’s really reasonable. So, we’ll put a link to that obviously in the show notes.

Jen: We totally will. Yes.

April: Yes. For people that might want to take advantage, because I know the pricing will go up, but they’re trying to keep it frozen in place right now because people are a little bit uncertain financially, which again suits Venus-with-Neptune symbolism.

Jen: Yes. And as long as we’re plugging things, I brought up World Book Day earlier… and I totally forgot to mention your books April, so I would like to do that right now. April, of course has – we mentioned this last week – made Oprah’s list of top astrology books with her book, “The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology.” And I’ll link that in the show notes. And her “Astrological Transits” book is also fantastic, so we’ll link that one as well.

April: Thank you. I am fond of that little book.

Jen: I forgot the whole reason that I brought up World Book Day! And that’s a very Neptune thing too.

April: I think we had a very rich discussion of encyclopedias we have known and loved, so I felt nothing was lacking there whatsoever.

April: But yes, if you’re looking for something to read during this clampdown period, you could do worse than my little books.

Jen: Your books are great.

April: Of which I am fond. So thank you for mentioning those. Yes.

Jen: Of course. Yes.

April: Well we have one day this week that has a lot going on – April 25th.

Jen: Very intense.

April: Yes. Mercury is square Pluto on that day. Pluto stations to turn retrograde and Mercury squares Jupiter. So it’s a busy day.

Jen: And you know what else I realized? Is that, just the day or two before that, Mercury is going to be passing through 22° to 24° of Aries… which means it’s going to be squaring the Saturn/Pluto conjunction from January 12th, and that’s all leading up to that too.

April: Yes. Those are good timing factors to look out for because it does trigger those past big aspects. In the same way it does eclipse points… and we talked about that a few episodes ago.

Jen: Yes.

April: As the Sun was going into Aries. And I think at the Aries New Moon, we talked about that.

Jen: Sounds right.

April: So Mercury, our old friend Mercury who we haven’t been talking about quite as much since he went into Aries, because we were so burnt out on him after the long slog through Pisces. But he’s now in Aries. Mercury, we talked about briefly, it has a quality of wanting to move fast. It’s also very… just, “Give me the facts.” And wants to get to the point quickly. So Mercury square Pluto in Capricorn and square Jupiter on that date, gives us a Mercury who’s stumbling a little bit in his path. Mercury and Aries moving so quickly and then suddenly like big hand, you know, rises up and says “Stop!”

Jen: Okay. The cosmic hand!

April: Yes, that’s the hand of Pluto. Pluto, he’s saying, “Stop. Because I’m getting ready to station to turn backwards here. Stop bugging me Mercury.” It’s like Mercury’s this little bird and keeps flap, flap, flapping all around Pluto. Pluto’s saying, “No, wait a minute, give me quiet. I’m doing my work of turning around.”

Jen: Okay.

April: When Pluto turns retrograde… we’ve talked about before, when these big outer planets –  especially Uranus, Neptune and Pluto – station. So they are standing still to either turn retrograde or they’ve been retrograde and now they’re turning direct. Well in this case Pluto is turning retrograde. And I said before that I don’t pay a lot of attention to whether they are direct or retrograde on a day-to-day basis because they are retrograde like roughly half the year – Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. But when you do notice is when they’re stationing, around the day that they’re stationing.

So April 25th is significant from that point of view. Because Pluto stationing retrograde is like a giant woolly mammoth or something. It sits down with an enormous thud and shakes everything and it’s just bringing everything to a halt.

Jen: Oh, I like that.

April: Pluto has been in an ongoing process of chewing us up and turning us into something new. And as it comes to a halt to start changing direction… I think of this as the digestion period.

Jen: Nice!

April: I could throw a lot of Pluto metaphors is in the mix here, but that’s the one that really resonates for me. So we get to sit in the belly of the beast for a while. And Mercury squaring that point, maybe that’s the mental food that we’re taking with us into this Pluto time. You know?

Jen: Yes.

April: And Mercury square Jupiter on the same day. Jupiter and Pluto have been traveling together, which we talked about at some length on a recent episode. And Mercury is just kind of triggering that combination. Because you’ve talked about it going through that period where it’s triggering the Saturn/Pluto for sure.

Jen: Right.

April: And it’s also triggering this Jupiter/Pluto.

Jen: It’s like you’re on a cloverleaf on a highway, passing over the same patch of highway again and again. You keep getting it from a different view, you know?

April: Absolutely. It’s like nodes in a way, nodes in the road.

And so Mercury triggering the Jupiter/Pluto. I think that’ll be an interesting day to look out for interesting news or new information, especially coming out about the pandemic. And we’ll see what the nature of that will be.

Jen: Yes.

April: Maybe it will be changing restrictions around sheltering in place. It could be something about, “Oh, we think we have a vaccination in the works.” So, it’s something. We’ll see. Mercury is always bringing the news when it’s squaring the Jupiter/Pluto. It just means it’s really triggering, it’s really energizing, it’s really activating it. But at the same time Pluto is sitting down and going “Boom.” And as it turns retrograde, we’ll see. We’ll see if that means that we’re entering into a time where the peril seems less intense because Pluto is sleeping.

Jen: Okay.

April: We’ll see.

Jen: So it’ll really flavor that whole week?

April: Yes. The whole story of this week is very much about that very intense New Moon with a lot of tension around it with the Saturn and Uranus at war with each other… with Venus, which rules Taurus being out of bounds, starting this process of getting ready to square Neptune. And then that day of just a lot of Pluto stuff getting triggered, Jupiter/Pluto things. We haven’t seen a lot of really peaceful, mellow weeks since all this started.

Jen: I’ve noticed that.

April: And this is no exception. Last week was probably the closest we came. But sometimes in the midst of emergencies, it’s those quiet weeks where everything kind of catches up with you too.

Jen: Yes.

April: So it might’ve been kind of a trying week for a lot of people emotionally… or in terms of really coming to grips with what’s been happening around us. So that is this week, my friend.

Jen: Yes. It’s like when you finally have time to stand still, it all kind of hits you.

April: Yes. And this is going to be more of a week of. “Okay, you better come out ready to meet the world because it’s going to be bringing some stuff our way.” So I hope you had a good rest last week.

Jen: Hmm, totally.

April: So I think that is all we have on the show sheet. Have we done it?

Jen: I think we’ve done it. Episode 22 and it’s coming out April 20th, 2020. That’s a lot of twos and a lot of twenties.

April: It is a lot of twos.

Well, thanks to all you for continuing to listen to the Big Sky Astrology Podcast. In this time where things are very unpredictable, some days are a little bit low – it’s always a source of great happiness for Jen and I to sit down and chat with each other.

Jen: Yes!

April: And we hope that it brings you some laughs and some fun as well. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss a single episode. You can read show notes and full transcripts of each episode and leave your comments at our website, www.bigskyastropod.com.

Jen: And if you find value in our podcast and you’re able to financially support it – even a dollar would help – please go to our website, www.bigskyastropod.com and go ahead and make a one-time contribution. Or, hey, you could make our day and set up an ongoing monthly contribution… that would just delight us. Wouldn’t it, April?

April: Yes! Be our pod pal! Be our pod pal!

Well, join us again, bright and early next Monday. And until then, keep your feet on the ground…

Jen: 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.

That’s all for today. If you like what you’re listening to, please take a moment to rate and review this podcast and hit subscribe to stay current with new episodes.

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Thanks again for joining us, and we’ll catch you next time.

Copyright 2020 April Elliott Kent & Jennifer Braun

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