Transcript: Episode 023 | Talkin’ Taurus and the Void (of Course!) Moon
April 27, 2020
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 27th, 2020. And here with me, of course, is my broadcasting buddy, astrologer April Elliott Kent. Hi, April!
April: Hello Jen! I am your broadcasting buddy, and you are mine.
Jen: I liked the alliteration of that.
April: Alliteration is a very good thing. Yes, that’s a good introduction. I feel good about that.
Jen: Oh, good!
April: How’s your week been?
Jen: My week’s been okay. How’s your week been?
April: Not so bad. Lots of naps. Plenty of snacking going on. I’m watching a lot of television.
Jen: What has drawn your interest this week?
April: HBO has dumped a lot of stuff into Hulu, so we watched two seasons of “Succession,” which was a dynamite show.
Jen: I haven’t seen that.
April: About very wealthy people behaving really poorly.
Jen: Okay.
April: Which doesn’t sound like it would be as intriguing in this day and age as it might be, but we enjoyed that a lot. I think I told you I’m watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine?
Jen: Yes.
April: Which is laugh-out-loud funny, so I’m liking that. And we just started a Spanish language crime drama sort of called Money Heist. It’s a funny title, but it’s about a band of nefarious creatures who take over the Spanish mint.
Jen: So it’s in subtitles for you?
April: Yes. Fortunately, I can read, so I can watch the show. Because my three semesters of college Spanish is not getting it done.
Jen:
April: I could grab the odd word here and there, but that’s a really good one. Do you speak any foreign languages?
Jen: I speak Spanish a bit.
April: ¿Un poco?
Jen: And I lived in Spain for a year.
April: Okay. Did that help with your command of the language?
Jen: I was quite fluent at the time. Not anymore though. I was, in fact, dreaming in Spanish and things like that back in the day.
April: Wow.
Jen: So ‘hola,’ to all of my Spanish friends.
April: Oh, hopefully we have people listening from Spain! Wouldn’t that be fabulous?
Jen: I think we do! It’s one of the 105 countries that is on the list of “places where our podcast has been downloaded.”
April: Exciting!
Jen: Yes!
April: Well, I got fluent enough with Spanish that I could read People magazine en español with some fluency.
Jen: The pictures help.
April: Yes. And I used to watch a kid’s telenovela. It was called “El Diario de…. somebody.”
April: Some kids name. Yes, so we used to watch this telenovela…
Jen: That sounded very Spanglish. I have to say.
April: Well, it was. I mean, I’m not here to fool anybody.
Jen:
April: I may live 15 miles from the border, but no, I’m fluent in enchiladas, but that really is about it. But I could read it super well for a while, but I never could speak. I’m so shy.
Jen: Fluent in enchiladas…
April: And because I learned a little bit of German first…
Jen: Let’s back up. Hold on.
April: Okay.
Jen: You are a little bit shy??
April: Of course. In speaking another language? You have to understand that my entire concept of self is based on the use of the English language.
Jen:
April: So if you take that away from me, what have I got? It’s really a problem. But because I learned a little bit of German first – I learned a little bit of German right out of high school in college – just enough to be dangerous. And because that got there first, many years later when I tried to learn Spanish, and I tried to converse in Spanish in class… somebody would ask me a question in Spanish and I would answer in German. Things got a little bit haywire in there. So now I can speak neither one at all.
Jen: But you do a heck of a job in English, may I say!
April: Thank you, Jen!
Jen: You’re welcome.
April: Yes, I decided to specialize in the one language, so…
Jen: I can tell. It really has brought you far, my friend.
April: Thank you. Well, I mean that’s as good a place as any to really start our astrological discussion this week. Because we’re back to talking about our friend Mercury.
Jen: Mercury…
April: The bane of our existence for the last month or so. But he’s zipping along now. I mean, he was in Pisces seemingly forever.
Jen: Swimmingly forever.
April: Swimmingly forever. He spent about 15 minutes in Aries, which is appropriate. Aries likes to just get to the point and get it done quickly. And now Mercury’s entering Taurus on April 27th at 12:53 PM Pacific Time. This is a very different vibe than Aries. And as we’ve discussed before: Mercury by transit – Mercury in the sky right now – really talks about not only the kinds of things we’ll be inclined to think about and talk about which will increasingly be Taurus things. It is interesting that it was in Aries through so much of this pandemic and the social distancing and all of that because Aries is the sign that’s most concerned with personal survival. And really we have found ourselves in a very strange and unprecedented time.
Jen: Yes.
April: And that has been so much of the nature of our thoughts and our discourse with each other is, how can we keep ourselves safe from disease and also just making sure we have the supplies we need and all of that? Very Aries-oriented. Aries does well in a crisis.
Jen: Makes sense.
April: So Mercury going into Taurus changes the nature not only of what we’re talking about but how we talk about it. Mercury in Taurus, people are going to be talking a lot about the economy I think and a lot about money and what we’re going to be doing about that.
Jen: Because Mercury is how we communicate, and Taurus is about money.
April: Correct. And the style of communication for Taurus is slower, is a little less dramatic, is a lot more practical.
Jen: Hopefully, people think a little more before they speak when Mercury is in Taurus.
April: Wouldn’t that be nice thing?
Jen: Yes.
April: As my husband would say, “Chance would be a fine thing.”
Jen:
April: I don’t know where that expression comes from, but yes. Mercury going into Taurus… if you think about, or if you know people in your life who are born with Mercury in Taurus – and it’s very common, for instance, if you know people who are born when the Sun was in Aries or Taurus or even Gemini, there is a better-than-likely chance they’ll have Mercury in Taurus, because Mercury never travels very far from the Sun. So it’s going to be in one of those signs usually.
When I think about how they communicate, I think of Gary Cooper, the actor in westerns who was known for being very laconic, “And well, I don’t know. And maybe it’s this and maybe it’s that.”
Jen: Yes.
April: So it’s a little calmer. We can hope. And as you say, people thinking things through a little bit more and coming up with solutions that are hopefully well thought-out.
Jen: More grounded.
April: Yes, grounded and practical.
Jen: So I have a question. Taurus is ruled by Venus who currently is out-of-bounds, which we discussed in Episode 22. And I was wondering if this meant, since Venus is sort of footloose and fancy free right now, does Venus then pass along some of these unbounded qualities onto Mercury as Mercury starts making these aspects to other planets? And also perhaps our Gemini and our Virgo houses in our own charts start taking on those qualities?
April: I think that’s a really good point. Nothing in Taurus right now is stereotypically Taurean, and that also goes back to Uranus being in Taurus.
Jen: Yes, exactly.
April: And what it says in a broader sense is, Taurus represents what we can depend on, what we can take to the bank, the ground beneath our feet, that we know is just going to be there. And it’s going to be that things that we expected to be status quo for our entire lives are now being brought into question, and are unstable, and it’s a time of great discord. So sure, not even Taurus is a completely safe place to stand. But its style, I think, will still tend to be its style. You know?
Jen: Yes.
April: Yeah. There is a little bit of this erratic Uranian kind of quality that may be coming from the Venus out-of-bounds, coming from Uranus in the sign. But overall, I think Taurus is Taurus and will tend to use fewer words and space them farther apart. And not have a lot of patience with nonsense.
Jen: Yes.
April: The Taurus people that I know, especially the ones with Mercury in Taurus, really don’t like dramatics. They don’t like people making a big stink about things, a big scene. They’re sort of in a way the opposite of Leo, which really does think that every situation would be improved with a little bit of drama.
Jen:
April: “Let’s keep it interesting.” And Taurus kind of rolls its eyes…
Jen: “Let’s toss this on the stage of life and see what happens.”
April: Exactly. So as Mercury goes into Taurus, it immediately begins making a sextile aspect to the Moo’ns North Node, which is sitting at 0° of Cancer, getting ready to back into Gemini. Which is happening soon. We’ll talk about that in the next podcast.
Jen: Yes.
April: But Mercury is sextile the North Node and it’s almost like Mercury is giving us one last chance to access something of that North-Node-in-Cancer experience.
Jen: Okay. I was going to ask something like that. Because you said last week that Mercury brings the news… if this is sort of going to be the last hurrah of the North Node moving through Cancer.
April: Yes. It’s like, the things that we’ve been talking about so much since we started the podcast – and so much having to do with that North Node in Cancer – is about: Are we going to be working collectively with each other? Are we going to take care of each other? Are we going to see each other as a universal family or not?
Jen: Which Saturn in Aquarius wants us to do.
April: Which Saturn would like, and also North Node in Cancer. Because Cancer is the mothering sign. Are we going to take care of each other? Right? And Saturn in Aquarius is certainly, “Are we a band of brothers?” It has that fraternal quality to it.
Mercury sextile the North Node, it’s a quick, fleeting little aspect, but it’s probably one of the last things that’s going to aspect the North Node before it moves back into Gemini. I haven’t looked for sure, but it probably is.
Jen: Yes.
April: So Mercury triggering that spot with this sextile says, “Let’s just take one last look at this. Are you doing everything you can be doing? Is there a friend that you’ve been thinking of reaching out to, but you haven’t? This is a good time to do that. Are you getting interesting offers or opportunities?” It’s an interesting time. So many of us have had to move our work online. And this is especially true of astrologers, people in my line of work who are offering lots of things for people right now. Lots of educational opportunities, webinars, free classes, all kinds of great stuff. So, it’s a really good time for new tools coming in, new ideas, new information.
Jen: Sure.
April: And it is of the nature of bringing us closer to, I don’t know, anything that brings us together collectively around ideas that have to do with: how we’re feeling, how we can connect better with each other in the future. And in a way it’s like this whole crisis is training us to stay in better touch with each other.
You’ve said that your family is getting together for weekly meals on zoom.
Jen: Yes.
April: I have friends that are doing happy hours every week. And it’s a nice kind of habit, I think.
Jen: It is a good one.
April: Yes. Being prompted to reach out to each other more and commune.
Jen: That’s lovely.
April: The day after that, Mercury makes a square to Saturn at 10:27 AM Pacific Time.
Jen: Following in the Sun’s footsteps.
April: Yes, and then it makes a conjunction with Uranus on the 30th. So, as you say, the Sun has just been there when we talked about the Taurus New Moon that was connected with that Saturn and Uranus as well. So Mercury squaring those planets now and making a conjunction to Uranus, but square Saturn. I think it is an opportunity to incorporate, in a intellectual way, things that we’ve learned, especially the last week.
One thing that comes to mind for me as Mercury squares Saturn, is how many of us are dealing with difficult thought patterns. And I’ve been certainly noticing this for myself; it’s been very hard to stay in an upbeat place mentally. I think Mercury square Saturn is great because Mercury is specifically about our thought patterns, how we’re thinking. Not just what’s happening and who we’re becoming as a consequence of that – which was more the energy of the Sun interacting with Saturn. But this is more, “What is the story that we’re going to tell about this time? What’s the story we want to tell ourselves right now about what’s happening? How do we want to cast ourselves? Are we going to be a protagonist and a hero and somebody who overcame adversity? Or are we going to be the person that curled up in a fetal position?” Which is me a lot of days, I have to admit.
Mercury square Saturn says, if we make the effort and we’re conscious and we take conscious steps toward a better story… training our minds in a good direction, then this is a good week to make some breakthroughs in that regard.
How’s that sound? Does that sound hopeful and good?
Jen: I like that. Because it has been a hard time. And I hear you when you say it’s difficult sometimes to really figure out what can we take from what’s happening around us right now that is helpful. I don’t think that you’re the only one in the world right now who is having some of these difficult thought patterns. What comes to my mind, again, is that book – I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll mention it again.
There’s a book by a woman named Byron Katie called “Loving What Is.” And she really challenges people in that book to look at their thought patterns and takes you through four questions that you can ask yourself around: What are the stories we tell ourselves? And are they true?
April: Yes.
Jen: Because a lot of the times they’re not.
April: Well they’re not. And that’s what takes us to Mercury in a conjunction with Uranus on the 30th. That’s the breakthrough. Saturn is the awareness that these patterns are, to a great extent, within our control. If we decide to develop our minds in a different direction, then we can. And Mercury making a conjunction to Uranus is interesting, because as a result of that discipline that we decide we want to acquire around our thoughts, then great insights are possible. And we can have these flashes of inspiration in how to do things or how to imagine a different future for ourselves. Because Uranus is very often about where we’re going. You know?
Jen: Yes.
April: In a future sense.
Jen: Uranus is the higher mind and Mercury is the earthly mind. Right? Aren’t they connected?
April: I think they are connected.
Jen: Like Neptune and Venus are connected in a way. And Uranus and Mercury are connected in the same way through the mind.
April: Yes.
Jen: So, hopefully something beautifully out of the box will come from it.
April: I certainly hope so. Yes, so that’s our friend Mercury for this week. He is up to things.
Jen: Very busy.
April: He’s doing interesting things, but there are opportunities in there to really turn things around and tell ourselves a different version of our reality.
Jen: That’s a wonderful.
April: Yes.
Jen: I like that.
April: Well, do you know what else is going on this week?
Jen: There’s a song I should play right now!
April: It’s Moonwatch!
April: It’s Moonwatch, yes! We have our First Quarter Moon on April 30th at 10°57’ of Leo and that’s at 1:38 PM in the Pacific Time Zone.
Jen: Right.
April: So the First Quarter Moon… and here we are again, we just had a New Moon. At the First Quarter Moon, the time has come to make some kind of movement. At the New Moon, we say, we plant a seed, we come up with an idea. We might formulate hopes and dreams and ambitions a little bit different perhaps during this time than we might during other New Moons. The New Moon in Taurus is really about, “How can I make my life more enjoyable and more comfortable? How can I get more of the things that I like that make me feel good and grounded and balanced in the world?”
So the First Quarter Moon comes along and says, “Okay, now it’s time to do something about this.” And it’s in the sign of Leo. So Leo says, “Well, one thing that is really joyful in the world is play and self-expression.”
Jen: Yes.
April: And so it’s a nice First Quarter Moon for that. And even the Sabian symbols for this First Quarter are so lovely. The Sabian symbol for 11 degrees, Leo – the Moon – is, Children in a swing in a huge oak tree. And there’s nothing about that image that I don’t love.
Jen: It’s really nice.
April: Yes. Children are of course considered to be associated with Leo because it’s youth and playfulness. And they’re in a swing, so they actually are playing. They’re in a huge oak tree, which is very Taurean, so it even brings in the Taurus energy.
Jen: Lovely.
April: And then the Sabian symbol for the Sun at the First Quarter Moon is 11° Taurus, A woman sprinkling flowers.
Jen: Nice.
April: So in both of these symbols, we get this lovely image of being outdoors, of playing, of enjoying the natural world, which we have talked about a lot with Taurus on this podcast. A huge oak tree. And the oak tree is very supportive. It’s something that isn’t going to fall down if you put a couple of kids in a swing on it. It’s stood the test of time. And it’s strong and we can depend on it. A woman’s sprinkling flowers actually, to me, demonstrates this wonderful optimism for the future.
Jen: Optimism. Nice.
April: She’s sprinkling flowers because: If you’re in a really bad place and you’re really down, you would see no point at all in sprinkling flowers.
Jen: That’s true.
April: Because you’d think, “Oh, they’re just going to die anyway.” It is a really nihilistic space.
Jen: Yes.
April: But this is a nice symbol. The woman is sprinkling flower. She says, “Oh, it’s okay. Things are continuing to grow. There still is hope and positivity in the world.” I actually really love this First Quarter Moon. It says: Even though our sense of security has really been challenged with that New Moon, even though it was in Taurus… again, Taurus is a little different these days than it normally is. And there was a lot of instability in that New Moon chart. We talked about the Sun being so close to Uranus, and the Sun and Moon and the square to Saturn. Pretty difficult chart and being ruled by this out-of-bounds Venus.
This First Quarter Moon to me is very positive. It takes us from the place of feeling that even the things that should feel stable don’t feel super stable. And into a place of Leo, which is, “Oh, what the heck? Let’s have a party anyway.”
Jen: That’s awesome.
April: The First Quarter Moon is still in close aspect to Uranus.
Jen: Yes. Because Uranus is at 7 Taurus at that time.
April: Yes. So there’s still a little bit of: Things have not really settled down entirely, but at least we’re feeling a little more like the spirit can come out and play a little bit.
Jen: Did you have a tree swing as a kid?
April: Yes!
Jen: You did?
April: Yes. Well, we lived on a farm and we had not just tree swings but trees. My grandfather was a bit of an amateur arborist. He had the most unusual trees all around our house where we lived. And we had giant pecan trees and wonderful trees for climbing, so we did have a swing – I can distinctly remember – off one of the pecan trees. But we climbed trees a lot.
What about you?
Jen: I don’t so much think of a swing in a tree, but there was a big tree that I used to climb as a kid. And I wonder if it’s still there in a woods near the house. We played around outside a lot when I was a kid.
April: Yes. It was great growing up in the country…
Jen: I bet.
April: …I have to say. Because there were trees. And we liked crawling around in the wheat fields, which would get my dad really angry at us.
April: And rambling and making little paths through it and stuff. Great fun, great fun. So that’s the First Quarter Moon in Leo and I absolutely love it. I think it looks fun. It speaks of playing, having fun. Again, back to that idea of Mercury sextile the North Node, communicating with our friends also in a playful way… and maybe expanding those weekly Zoom meetings into a weekly Yahtzee game or trivial pursuit or something… could be super fun.
Jen: Nice.
April: So, there’s that.
Jen: All right.
April: Well last week we did start to talk a little bit about this series of squares that Venus is going to make with Neptune.
Jen: Yes. And the week before, we actually talked a little bit about Venus just missing the trine to Mars on Episode 21. And on Episode 22, we talked about looking at the squares that are coming up and Venus being out-of-bound. So if folks are interested in those episodes, I’ll link them in the show notes.
April: Yes.
Jen: What can you tell us this time, with Venus squaring Neptune for the first of three times?
April: Yes, we’re having the first pass on May 3rd at 8:52 PM Pacific, Venus at 20° 18 minutes of Gemini, it will make its first of three squares to Neptune. And the other two are going to be on May 20th and July 27.
Venus, of course, is moving direct now. It makes the square to Neptune, it will turn retrograde on May 12th… it will eventually make the second square on May 20th and then it will turn direct… and on its way out of town it will make one last square to Neptune on July 27.
So this is the first of them. And it kind of establishes the pattern, I think. When you have a series of aspects like this, you look to the first one really to say, “What’s the story going to be? What are we talking about here?”
The Sabian symbol for Venus at this square is a labor demonstration, which is kind of interesting. I was just writing last week in my weekly column about how we starting to see some signs of unrest in some cities. Not huge rallies or anything, but some people are starting to get a little bit as they would say, where my husband grew up, “Getting toey.” Getting a little restless and impatient.
Jen: He grew up in New Zealand.
April: He grew up in New Zealand. I don’t know if that is an Australian or New Zealand expression, but it’s like a racehorse. Champing at the bit getting ready to take off during a race.
Jen: Is that what that comes from? Okay.
April: Yes. Getting toey. So people are getting a little bit toey about the sheltering-in-place and concerns about their finances and everything else. That’s what came to mind to me when I saw that Sabian symbol.
Jen: The power of the people.
April: Yes. A labor demonstration is: The rabble are getting roused. The difficult part of all of this is really symbolized by the Venus square Neptune. Which is: It’s really hard to know what to believe. It’s kind of hard to know what is reality. Because there are so many conflicting narratives about what’s going on with the disease, with the nature of it, with how it spread, how we can best keep ourselves safe. And everybody’s got an opinion and there’s a lot of conflict in the opinions. We’re getting to this point as Venus squares Neptune, where there’s this great desire to get clear about what’s going on and really insisting on answers and clarity. I think people have gotten over the initial shock of everything shutting down and being in really uncharted territory. And now there’s just enough Taurean normalcy that’s begun to take hold.
Jen: Sure.
April: And I think people are, “Hey, wait a minute now… is everything that’s happening, what should be happening? Is enough happening?” There are lots of different ways to approach the situation, but a lot of the different narratives put us in conflict with each other.
Jen: Right.
April: The Sabian symbol for Neptune’s degree at this first square is 21 Pisces, “A little white lamb, a child and a Chinese servant.”
So, what we have to remember is the Sabian symbols came to us in 1925. Right?
Jen: Yes.
April: And the language that was used around people of color, in particular, during that era is probably a little different than we would use today. But we have to say there was a very particular reason that Elsie Wheeler, who intuited the Sabian symbols, would have seen it the way she saw it. She specifically saw a Chinese servant and that would have meant something specific in 1925.
Jen: Okay.
April: And I can’t pretend to know all of what that was. What I get from this – and just putting it together with the other Sabian symbol which is a labor demonstration – is something about the clarity of relationships. Whenever I’ve seen this symbol, I’ve imagined somehow that the lamb belong to the child, and the child was under the care of the Chinese servant. And that’s just my imagination coming up with that story. But that speaks of a social class situation right there. I think that the combination of Venus with Neptune here is something about seeing relationships clearly, defining what is equal, what everybody in society is entitled to. And also about social class. Somebody said it really well… It was some marketing newsletter that I was on… and she said that we’ve all been saying during this time, “We’re all in this together.” We even called an episode that. But she said, “We’re not really. We’re all in the same water, but we’re all in different boats.”
Jen: I’ve heard that.
April: Yes.
Jen: The same storm but different boats.
April: Because we’re not all in the same situation. There are plenty of people who have enough. They have enough wealth. They have enough resources. They have the luxury to ride this out without a whole lot of peril or a difficult impact on their lives.
Jen: Yes.
April: There are some other people who are living in downtown San Diego in the convention center.
Jen: Right.
April: There are questions here and issues here related to equality and social class. Even in the way federal money is being distributed to small businesses and individuals. I think that’s a lot of the tone that I’m getting around this series of squares that are between Venus and Neptune. Venus is about our shared wealth. It’s about money. It’s about the things we all own collectively like open space, and land, and all of that, and also individual money. And Neptune has always had a characteristic of class and of race and of how we negotiate that in a society.
Jen: Interesting.
April: So we’re not all seeing the same situation from the same vantage point. That this is always true in our society and this is just bringing it to the fore. And moments of great urgency bring this about. We saw it in Hurricane Katrina in a really dramatic way. How different it was for various people in New Orleans.
Jen: Absolutely.
April: It’ll be interesting. I mean, some people will experience this more on the level of personal relationships and that’s Venus as well. And Neptune it’s kind of like, as I think we’ve said before: We’re all spending a lot of time in cramped quarters these days and we’re getting to know each other on a whole different level. And Venus square Neptune is the process of those things arising, those realities. So those are my thoughts about the Venus square Neptune.
Jen: Alright. Thank you.
April: So aspects like that, when Venus squares Neptune… a lot of the aspects we talk about are kind of more broad-ranging, especially something like this that’s going to happen three times. It takes us across a journey over a couple of months, for instance. But there is also the day-to-day journey that we make. And you know, we always giggle about our Moonwatch theme and everything, but we do center each episode around the Moon. The Moon really sort of gives form to our daily lives. In astrology, it’s symbolizes day-to-day life and domestic situations, for instance.
Jen: Sure.
April: But as we watch the Moon move each month through its signs, making aspects to all of the other planets in turn, developing its phase relationship with the Sun… We can see on a really intimate day-to-day level how each day unfolds. So if we think of all of these bigger patterns – like the Venus square Neptune – happening kind of in the background… and we know on some level that these are important things that we need to think about and talk about. But really the first thing we have to do when we get up in the morning, as Jen’s t-shirt says today, is “Coffee first.”
These little rituals that we have, these little routines that we have gives structure to our days. And that is a great deal of our day. We talked about this, I think, at one point… we talked about the sixth house and discussed this.
Jen: Yes. During the Groundhog Day episode.
April: Yes. Where you spent so much of your time doing sixth house things and also lunar things.
So the Moon each day tells us about the rhythm and the tempo of the day. Because the Moon moves quickly, it moves through a sign of the Zodiac every two and a half days.
So if you have one of these celestial calendars and you look at the day, and you see the Moon making all of these aspects… it will often make a lot of aspects in a day. If you’re seeing a lot of squares and you’re seeing a lot of oppositions or a lot of conjunctions, you’re talking about a day where the rhythm is a little bit fraught. There’s going to be challenges, there’s going to be conflict. Things are not going to flow in an easy way.
Jen: Right.
April: Whereas if you see the Moon making a lot of trines, lot of sextiles, things just have a good flow. It’s not that you’re going to get everything you want necessarily, but it’s just kind of easy.
It’s like you wake up in the morning, you walk through your house, you’re not fully conscious. Are you stepping over a bunch of dog toys or kid toys or junk that got left out the night before? And you’re tripping and you’re cursing, and it’s getting your day off to a bad start? Or, do you walk out and everything’s put away and tidy and easy, and somebody filled the kettle the night before… so all you have to do is turn it on? It’s a whole different vibe.
Jen: Sure.
April: So there is another element to this journey of the Moon. And it’s called “the Void-of-Course Moon. When I used to read about this when I was young, I thought – I read it in my mind as, ‘Void, of course!’
April: And it’s not that at all. It is void-of-course. It is without a course. What it means is the Moon has made the last major aspect it will make in that sign. And that it is just sort of sitting there, kind of dead in the water, before it moves on to the next sign. This is the concept of the void-of-course Moon. It was really popularized in the 20th century. And its roots in traditional astrology are quite different. Traditional astrologers understand and use the void-of-course Moon quite differently than this. But this is a really fast and easy way to work with the void-of-course Moon. The reason we would even bother doing that is because we would say the void-of-course Moon times have a particular flavor to them. That they are not the best times for initiating new activities.
And there’s some controversy about this. We were talking about this before we began our conversation, Jen, and you said that one astrologer was saying that these were times when, for instance, you make purchases or something like that, these purchases might end up being disappointing.
Jen: Yes, I’ve heard that more than one time.
April: Yes. Myself as well. And what I have found in practice in my own life is that, actually, some of the bigger decisions I’ve made in my life have happened accidentally on a void-of-course Moon. And they were things that just kept going and going and going. And an example I used in a lecture on this topic was: I bought a car, the only new car I ever bought. And I ended up having that car for 30 years.
Jen: Wow.
April: And I bought it on a void-of-course Moon in late Capricorn.
Jen: Way to go.
April: I know. And I met my husband on a void-of-course Moon late in Capricorn. And we’re still together, obviously, many years later – 27 years later or something.
So I think that you could interpret this a couple of different ways because the energy is: the Moon has finished making its aspects. There’s nothing to interrupt it in its trajectory. It’s just kind of like being in a boat on still water, and then it moves into another waterway when it moves into a new sign.
Jen: I see.
April: So you could say, either it means that nothing particularly good happens… but it can also mean nothing gets in the way to change its course. It’s drifting along.
We’ll give you an example of this. On Friday May 1st the Moon is going to be in Leo. It will make its last aspect in Leo at 9:04 AM Pacific Time, a square to Mars. And it will not enter Virgo, the next sign, until 10:35 PM. So you’ve got a fairly long void-of-course period. You’ve got pretty much an entire day here on the West coast where the Moon is void-of-course. So some astrologers would tell you, “Oh, this is a terrible day to do much of anything.” And I’m thinking, “Well that’s not how life works. We all have to do things.”
Jen: Exactly.
April: So what are the best things to do? I used to hear a guy on the radio in Los Angeles on my morning drive show Darryl Martini, who was actually a pretty well-known astrologer at one point. He called himself ‘The Cosmic Muffin’ and he use to do a little short five-minute thing on the drive time show. And on the void-of-course Moon days, he would always say, “This is a really good day to start a diet or something like that.” And that sort of goes along with my concept that I had of it, which is, ‘Things keep going and going, nothing’s going to get you off course.’
So it’s a time to start new habits on the void-of-course Moon. Something that you want to continue going in the same way in perpetuity.
Jen: I see.
April: But certainly things can have a quality of not really going necessarily in the direction that you thought they would, where you might’ve hoped they would. Things are a little more unpredictable, they say, during a void-of-course Moon time.
I don’t know, does that help?
Jen: I’ve never heard that… That’s just so interesting to kind of turn it on its head and think of it the other way, that things keep going. That makes sense though.
April: Yes, that’s what I like to do.
Jen: You like to make sense!
April: I’m just a contrarian! It’s like, “Well, I don’t know, does it work that way?’
Jen: It’s so lovely that you want to make sense.
April: Always trying to understand. It’s the ninth house planets.
So that’s a little mini-tutorial in the void-of-course Moon. It’s a rich topic that I could talk about for a long time, but hopefully that helps people understand: When you see it in your little celestial calendars, it’ll say “VOC or V/C” or something like that. And that’s all it means. It means that the Moon has finished its work in the sign that it’s in, and then it’s just sort of kicking back until it’s time to move into the next sign.
Jen: Yes. And if you sign up for April’s newsletter at bigskyastrology.com you get a free Working with the Moon workbook each month. And April gives you the void-of-course Moon times in that workbook.
April: Absolutely I do. And the Moon’s entry into the various signs and all of the rest. So thank you for that little interjection there, Jen!
Jen: April doesn’t ever tell me to do that. I just toss it in!
April: She always says that I’m the least promotional Leo she’s ever known! The least self-promotional Leo.
Jen: It’s true!
April: But I’m smart enough to work with Libras always.
Well my friend, that’s everything we have on our list. Have we done it?
Jen: We have done it once again. Episode 23!
April: Well thank you so much for listening to our little podcast every week. If you like what you’re hearing, we hope that you will subscribe so that you don’t miss a single episode. We would love it if you shared the podcast with a friend if you think they would enjoy it. You can read show notes and full transcripts of each episode and leave your comments, as well, at our website, which is bigskyastropod.com.
Jen: And we want to let you know how grateful we are for your comments. It means so much to us to get those on our website, and to see them in Apple podcasts, and some of you leave them in the Podbean app. And it’s really sweet. It warms our little hearts. Doesn’t it, April?
April: It does. Because it lets us know that we’re giving you something that you value.
Jen: And it helps us know that we’re not doing this in a void. Speaking of voids… See what I did there?
April: Oh, aren’t you clever!
April: You love your word play! You rapscallion!
Jen: And it means a ton to us when you leave a donation for us as well at www.bigskyastropod.com. Because as April said, it lets us know that you value the show.
And so, if you want to pitch in a dollar or 20 or make an ongoing monthly contribution, we would love that. It would help out so much. So thank you.
April: Thank you. It is very helpful. It helps us with covering some of the expenses that go with having a podcast that we like to think is high quality.
Jen: Yes.
April: So we certainly hope you agree. And thanks to all of you who have made contributions. It’s delightful. Thank you so much.
Jen: Thank you.
April: 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.
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© 2020 by April Elliott Kent & Jennifer Braun
