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TRANSCRIPT Ep. 58 | Gemini Lunar Eclipse and the Amazing Eclipse Maven

Transcript Episode 58 (Nov. 30, 2020)

Gemini Lunar Eclipse and the Amazing Eclipse Maven

Show notes and audio link here

Jen: Hey friends, Jen here. Today is November 30th, 2020. And here with me as always to noodle on the planetary news, is my friend Astrologer, April Elliott Kent. Hi, April.

April: Hi Jen.

Jen: Do you like pasta?

April: Oh man. It is my life. Much to my detriment, but boy, I love me a noodle. So you could not have wormed your way into my heart more effectively.

Jen: Oh, great.

April: Then with that introduction, how you doing pal?

Jen: I mean, you know, amidst the pandemic and all this very serious stuff going on in the world. I’m over here in Minneapolis doing my best.

April: You’re maintaining equanimity, which is what a Libra does.

Jen: Look at you just turning that right into astrotalk. I love that.

April: That’s right.

Jen: How about you? How are you?

April: I can’t really complain. I mean, I can.

Jen: Sure you can.

April: But why would you?

Jen: Oh, funny.

April: Why would you? So we’re recording this before Thanksgiving and we were talking before about how we’re going to pass that holiday and so forth. I’m a little disappointed of course, that I’m not going to be able to have my usual Thanksgiving celebration with my family, but we have plans that are making me happy as well. And they include pecan pie.

Jen: Pie is always good.

April: And it’s supposed to be quite cool here for San Diego.

Jen: Which is what for you?

April: Well, it’ll be a high of 66°F that day.

Jen: Oh, wow.

April: Bracing.

Jen: Put on an extra sweater, pal.

April: I will.

Jen: Minnesotans would be wearing shorts if it were 66 here.

April: I think of you often when that is the case, I think, “Oh, Jen would be sitting on the beach.”

Jen: No, for real. They’d be wearing shorts.

April: Oh no, I know. I know. And that night it’ll be a little, probably in the forties or something. So we’ll get to have a fire and we can sit and have our little Thanksgiving foods.

Jen: And how does Johnny feel about staying in for Thanksgiving?

April: He doesn’t mind. It’s not one of his. He comes from another country where they don’t do Thanksgiving.

Jen: Yes. New Zealander.

April: Yes. So he doesn’t have that nostalgic resonance ready. For him, he’s happy if I’m happy on Thanksgiving, because he knows that I really like it.

Jen: Yes.

April: That is what we are doing. So I’m sort of sitting here right now week out, of course it will pass by the time people are listening to this, but I’m feeling somewhat hopeful and festive and all of the rest of it.

Jen: Very good. I’m very glad to hear that.

April: Well, we have a lot to cover this week. It’s going to be a big week. And Jen, do you know where we begin today?

Jen: Where do we begin?

April: Moonwatch…

Jen: Moonwatch…

April: Play it!

April: Oh my gosh. You have such a rich resonant timbre to your voice.

Jen: What a compliment…

April: Yes, folks. It’s Moonwatch! And this week we have a Full Moon, which is also a lunar eclipse, a subject, as you know is dear to my heart. I’m very interested in eclipses.

Jen: Yes, you are our eclipse expert, pal.

April: I try to be.

Jen: That’s nice.

April: This particular eclipse falls at 8° and 38 minutes of Gemini. That’s where the Moon will be. And since it’s a lunar eclipse, we know that the Sun and the Moon are opposite each other rather than together as they are at a solar eclipse. So that means the Sun is at 8°, 38 minutes of Sagittarius.

Jen: And April, if I could jump in, I want to let folks know that this is actually the last lunar eclipse of 2020. Of course we’ll have a solar eclipse in a couple of weeks.

April: We will, on December 14th.

Jen: Okay. And it’s visible to people in North and South America, Australia, and much of Asia. This is a partial eclipse. We can see 82% of it from planet earth. It’ll just turn a slightly darker shade. So it won’t be that rich red like a full lunar eclipse would be, but we’ll be able to see it a little bit, getting darker from those places. And I’ll put a link in the show notes so that you can go in and see if you can see it from the city that you live in.

April: Perfect.

Jen: Now, if you could please my friend, break this down for us. Where do we start with this eclipse?

April: Let’s begin with what eclipses represent astrologically. Astrologically, they are about change. They’re about usually something is changing in our lives that may seem out of the blue at the given moment. But actually when we think back, we can say, “Oh, this is a change that’s been coming for a while.” Some of them impact us a little more strongly than others. And I find that it has a lot to do with how the eclipse point in this case, 8.5° Gemini and Sagittarius, how those points are impacting your personal birth chart. You would look for the houses of your birth chart that contain 8.5° of Gemini and Sagittarius. I have a little blog post with a video in it. We’ll include that in the show notes and link to it.

Jen: Perfect.

April: And those houses represent the areas of your life that are more apt to be undergoing some change at this time. And the analogy I often use for this is, it’s like you’re walking down a particular path and you find you’ve taken it as far as it will go and you have to turn around and go in the other direction. Then we’ll take the symbolism of the signs that the eclipses are in. And this year they are falling in Gemini and Sagittarius. And these are signs of information of learning, of ideas and how we communicate them.

Jen: And we’re done now with the eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn. Isn’t that right?

April: Yes. We had our last one, I think, over the summer.

Jen: Yes.

April: So, now we’re fully into mutable territory.

Jen: And going into 2021, we’ll continue to have eclipses in Gemini and Sagittarius throughout next year?

April: Yes. And because they move backwards, they track with the lunar nodes, which naturally move backwards. After this, we will have eclipses in Scorpio and Taurus for a couple of years.

Jen: Yes. And the lunar nodes, just so folks know is, if you can picture the Earth’s path around the Sun and then the Moon’s path around the earth, it’s where those two paths connect.

April: Right. Where they intersect. Because they’re kind of at an angle to each other. So there are two points where they connect with each other, and those are the lunar nodes. If you have planets in your chart or points, like the ascendant or the midheaven or other sensitive points, between about 4.5° and 12.5° of the mutable signs, which are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, or Pisces, this is going to be an eclipse to watch for you.

Eclipses, especially lunar eclipses, I find are very much associated with changes in relationship. And we have been seeing that over the last couple of weeks with that Venus opposition to Uranus, heard of a couple of breakups of kind of long-term relationships. And lunar eclipses are also representative of that point in relationships with other people where we have taken it as far as it can go and something has to change. It’s not always that the relationship ends, but it certainly that one, or both people are starting to need something a little bit different perhaps than they’re getting from the relationship. And since this is of the nature of Gemini and Sagittarius, it’s a good bet that communication skills need to be tightened up a little bit.

Jen: It’s interesting that you’ve been seeing that playing out in your business, it sounds like. Is that right?

April: Yes. So that is the general nature of eclipses and especially lunar eclipses. You look at the houses that they fall in, in your birth chart. You look at any planets or points between 4.5 and 12.5 of the mutable signs to see if any of your personal planets are experiencing this energy of change in a potent way. And then we are going to look at the past years recently, like since I go back to 1980 or something to say, “Where have we had eclipses near this point?” Because if we can go back to these dates and say, “What big was happening in your life?” Then we get a little bit of an idea of the themes you’ll be examining at this eclipse time. It’s not that the exact same thing will happen. Sometimes I’ll talk about this and people get really scared. And goes like, “Oh no, in those years, this really terrible thing happened to me.”

It doesn’t work that way, that you’re going to have another horrible experience. It just says that you will review what you learned from those difficult past experiences. And sometimes they’re very positive things that happened too. So I would send people back in time, it’s time for our way back machine here, to the following dates that are important in the life of this eclipse. And that was May 30th of 1984, November 29th of 1993, May 31st of 2003, June 1st, 2011 and November 28th, 2012.

Jen: Okay.

April: All of those word dates when we had an eclipse that was very close to 8° of Gemini.

Jen: So themes might be coming back that we might recognize a pattern is what you’re saying from these dates? And if you’re old enough to go all the way back to 1984, you might even see something from then?

April: All the way back to 1984.

Jen: The 80’s.

April: Yes. We love the 80’s. Yes.

Jen: Neon clothes and…

April: Oh, big shoulder pads.

Jen: Big shoulder pads.

April: Tall hair. I had very tall hair. I’m paying for it now with what I did to my hair then. But I was telling you before we started recording, in fact that a week after that June 1st, 2011 eclipse, which was exactly the same degree as my natal Moon, that’s when my book, “The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology” was published.

Jen: That’s huge. Which is a great book, if anyone wants to check it out, we can put a link in the show notes.

April: Thank you. I’m proud of that book. And it really was a big leap forward in my career because it was with a major publisher and it’s gone on to do pretty well for me. And so that was very significant. So sometimes as I say, when you have an eclipse very close to a personal planet, it can be something really nice that comes your way as it was for me then.

Jen: Yes. That’s really interesting. Do you want to mention what lunar phase family this eclipse falls in?

April: Thanks to our friend Celeste, who hipped us to the idea of these lunar phase families. And we will link again to a very fine article on this, on Frank Clifford’s website. You’ll see that in the show notes. That each new Moon begins a lunar phase, where you have the new Moon and the nine months later, you’ll have a first quarter Moon near that same degree, the new Moon degree. Nine months after that, you’ll have a Full Moon near the same degree. And then nine months after that, you’ll have a last quarter Moon near that degree. So it’s about two and a half years between a new Moon and when it completely plays itself out through these phase families. This lunar eclipse being a Full Moon is a continuation of a phase family that began in a new Moon on June 3rd, 2019 at just about 12.5° of Gemini, so pretty close within that degree.

Jen: Yes.

April: So you might also get some good food for thought by going back to summer before this last one, June 3rd, 2019, and see if anything big was happening and what you were wishing for at that time and the intentions that you might have set for yourself, because you will be at a point now where you’re really beginning to see the fruition of those seeds that you planted then, but it’s an eclipse, so it might not look exactly the way you expected it to look. In fact, it probably won’t.

Jen: Of course. Yes

April: Alright.

Jen: Before we move on from the eclipses, I have a question. But if you have something more about the meat of this, go for it.

April: No, I was just going to refer people to Episode 5, “Unboxing Eclipses.”

Jen: Yes.

April: Where we explored eclipses, I think through the houses and even with the planets.

Jen: Yes, we did. It was a lot of detail.

April: You can also get that information of course, in my eclipse report, “Followed By A Moonshadow,” which follows three years of eclipse points through your personal chart and points out which houses the eclipses are falling in, what planets they are aspects in, and previous years that they impacted your chart in the same way.

Jen: Yes, that’s a great report. So if folks want to pick that up, we will definitely link that in the show notes. I do have one question for you pal, before we move on. Since this eclipse is in Gemini, Mercury in Scorpio is the ruler, does that give us kind of a Scorpio flavor to this eclipse. Do you think?

April: Well, probably. And looking at the chart for this eclipse for the moment that it happens, what’s interesting is it’s almost like you have two different charts going on, because you have this Sun and Moon a fire sign and an air sign, and they are both connecting in a favorable way with Mars in Aries. So they’re kind of wanting to be full steam ahead and lots of ideas and a lot of energy to get out and do things. But the rest of the chart is still really feeling it’s got the Venus and Scorpio, it’s got Mercury and Scorpio, it’s still got everything in Capricorn, although that’ll be changing soon. It’s got Neptune and a water sign. So it’s like two different charts in a way where we feel ready to spring ahead and start getting some things done. But all those things in Scorpio and Capricorn and Pisces to me speak of still having a little bit of inner work to be done before we launch forth. So I think that Mercury being towards the end of Scorpio, and we’re going to be talking today about an aspect it’s making a Saturn. Certainly I think informs this particular chart, this particular eclipse day. And it’s probably not something that I would pay as much attention to maybe as the eclipse points in people’s charts and stuff. But certainly it’s not just Gemini, as you point out.

Jen: Yes

April: Because Gemini gives us a particular picture of lightness and brightness and fleetness. Mercury and Scorpio gives it more gravity, more depth, more inward-facing imagery. Does that answer your question?

Jen: It sure does. Yes.

April: Happy eclipse to you my friend,

Jen: Happy eclipse to you, our eclipse maven.

April: I’m a maven. Look at me, I’m an amazing Maven! Well, since we’re speaking of Mercury, next on our show sheet also on the same day as the eclipse, Mercury will make a sextile to Saturn. And that’s November 30th at about 11:00 AM here on the West coast towards the end of Scorpio and Capricorn respectively. Which as you pointed out to me is very close to the anareticc degree that astrologers talk about where something’s at 29°.

Jen: Which means what for people that aren’t familiar with that phrase?

April: Well, the way that I’ve always interpreted it is that you have had a fullness of experience with a planet in a particular sign. You have gotten to the end of it. You’ve learned a lot. And you’re getting ready to then maybe disseminate some of that information to the world and say, “This is what I know about this.” It also has a sense of urgency about it, a sense of scrambling to finish up. Make sure you’ve really gotten everything out of the experience that you can. And the reason this is so important is not so much about Mercury being towards the end of its sign, because that happens about every three weeks….

Jen: Right.

April: Because he moves so fast. It’s like every time we turn around, he’s at 29° of something. But he’s tickling Saturn, which is also getting to the end of Capricorn. It’ll be there. It’s switching over into Aquarius in the middle of next month.

Jen: Coming up soon.

April: The middle of December. I mean, by the time we’re releasing this episode, it’ll almost be December. So…

Jen: Right.

April: Yes. We’re bringing both of these symbols together and saying, “We’re really thinking about this week where we’ve been, what we’ve been up to. How do we want to reconfigure and reschedule and really plot a strategy for this big shift that’s coming ahead with Jupiter and Saturn both moving into Aquarius the middle of December?”

Jen: Which will mean what? So Saturn and Jupiter have been in Capricorn in this heavy earth energy. They’re moving into Aquarius, which is an air sign. Just a lighter feel to that perhaps?

April: Now, like you were saying to me earlier, it’s like the last gasp of – literally – in Capricorn, it’s like being buried alive, almost. There’s been so much emphasis in earth and particularly that heavy Capricorn stuff. I don’t have any illusions that this is going to transform our world overnight and make the world a brighter, lighter, happier place to be. But what it does say is the battle moves kind of upward in the body to the head, to the imagination, to thinking things through and talking about things. With Capricorn, it just feels like there was so much Capricorn and feels like we’d been in a little box and it is a little hard too. We can breathe. I mean, look at the nature of the pandemic and the illness that we’re dealing with, which is literally about not being able to get your breath.

So it’s kind of interesting. And having it move into Aquarius, I think is going to at least be a big shift towards making some kind of progress with things.

Jen: Well, and interesting that they’re talking about there possibly being a vaccine coming out in December for COVID. That feels kind of aquarium to me.

April: Yes. Maybe. We’ll see. It’s going to be big. Obviously, we’re going to talk a lot about this coming into our next few episodes.

Jen: Absolutely.

April: As we’re getting towards those sign changes, then they will come together in a conjunction, same degree of the same sign on the day of the solstice. So, a lot of big stuff coming up. So this Mercury to me is just sort of paving the way for this. It looks like a very small little, oh, it’s just a little sextile, a Mercury sextile. But to me, it’s really a time to focus and think and pleading our case. I always love what CarolInE Casey says that I was just writing about in my column, which is “The gods want to help us. The invisible world wants to help us. But spiritual etiquette requires that we ask.” And that is what ritual is for, is to ask. And Mercury in Scorpio, I always think of as being a very magical and very ritual-based placement for Mercury.. to ask the gods, “Where shall I go next? What should my, the next big project? What have I accomplished while Saturn has been in Capricorn? And how can I carry that forward in a positive way as we move into this new Aquarius season?”

Jen: What is it writer, Anne Lamott always says “There are three prayers, Help, Wow and…” Oh, what’s the third one?

April: Thank you. Is it “Thank you”?

Jen: Yes. It’s “Thank you.”

April: I love Anne Lamott and I love Caroline Casey. To me, in my mind, they’re sort of kindred spirits. So this week, ask. And the sextile is always an opportunity to ask and finding the right moment and the right people to ask in some cases to help us move forward.

Jen: Awesome. And Mercury continues to bust some moves this week, as he moves into Sagittarius on December 1st at 11:51 AM Pacific Time. Mercury entering Sagittarius. What is that April? A call to…?

April: Yes, I love the busting a move. And you said it very seriously too. He continues to bust a move.

April: Yes. That’s what he’s doing.

Jen: Were you laughing?

April: I was.

Jen: My headphones didn’t pick that up. Our connection’s a little iffy today.

April: Oh, I was.

Jen: Its funny.

April: I was chuckling. Yes, Mercury in Sagittarius, where it will stay for a few weeks, I guess. And Mercury is our communication planet. So he sat there and had his little confab with Saturn and had some serious discussions and said, “Okay, have we got a strategy here? Do we have a way to move forward?” And then Mercury bounds into Sagittarius and the style of communication that we engage in will usually change as Mercury changes signs because signs are often thought to be very stylistic in nature for one thing. So this will be communicating in a more open and frank and if possible, even more opinionated way than people have been lately, Sagittarius isn’t necessarily interested in keeping secrets in the same way Mercury in Scorpio is. And it tends to be a little more humorous and a little more philosophical and perhaps a little more optimistic and positive.

Mercury, however, is in its detriment in Sagittarius. And it can get a little overwhelmed by Sagittarius’  big ideas. It’s tough. This is always the one that I use the analogy of the funnel where there’s this big opening on one end of the funnel and Sagittarius pours everything it can into there. But it can only get out through the little tiny end, which is Mercury or ideas, the way we communicate our mouths. It can be actually a surprisingly frustrating placement for Mercury sometimes, but in a cheerful way.

Jen: A little too much adventure, maybe?

April: The ideas are a little too big. Our minds are really having to stretch and to grasp at all. And we also, of course, as we’ve been saying what the South Node being in Sagittarius all year, we have to be aware of thinking that we know everything. And we continue…I find around me, as a society, everybody is convinced they know everything about everything and they are unimpeachably correct. And I think that that is a danger zone that is common to Sagittarius when it’s not working at its peak. So I think we have to be a little careful about that. It’s great to be open, to communicate. There are times when you have to stick to your guns ethically, to say, “Yes, this is what I believe” and to be courageous about that. But you’re walking a fine line, always with Sagittarius of allowing the possibility that there is a different way of looking at things. Okay. Well, what have got next?

Jen: Next up on the show sheet, we have Venus making a trine to Neptune in Pisces, Venus at 18°, 10 minutes of Scorpio. This sounds like a lovely aspect. And I feel like we have actually talked about this before.

April: I know we have. Because I haven’t in my birth chart. And I think I remember talking about that.

Jen: That those ring a bell.

April: And it is one of my favorites of my natal aspects. What’s nice about Venus in a good aspect to Neptune is – especially Venus in Scorpio because it doesn’t love lightly…. When it loves you, it loves you for good. But what’s nice about Venus in Scorpio connecting with Neptune is Neptune’s a little softer. Scorpio is a nice tempering influence for Neptune. Because Neptune can get into that gauzy imaginative, seeing what it wants to see vibe versus anything in Scorpio, which cannot fool itself at all at any moment. So I like Venus in Scorpio, trine Neptune. I think they are helpful for each other. Venus in Scorpio keeps us from getting too much out into La La land with Neptune, but Neptune can give some kind of hope and gentleness into Scorpio’s view of the world. So I like it. It does represent unconditional love or affection or regard, sometimes that doesn’t work out as we’d hoped. Certainly if you have this in your birth chart, it’s something where you have to go through some misadventures in relationship where you kind of fool yourself, that this is a person that needs your help and only you can help them.

Jen: That always works.

April: That works so well. But then when you get with the right person, it means you’re really there and you can continue to see the best in them. I love to see Neptune in long-term relationships, a little of it. Because it gives us that ability to see others as the best they can be, as someone that is worth our love and our regard.

Jen: Yes. That sounds nice.

April: Yes.

Jen: Didn’t you recently give a talk about Neptune?

April: Yes. Neptune in relationship.

Jen: And is that something that folks could purchase, perhaps?

April: I am happy to report that they now can. Yes, that was the “Breaking Down the Borders Conference,” an online conference. And I did this lecture on November 7th, “Saints and Suckers: Neptune in Relationship.” They do have that available now. And it’s really interesting what they’ve done. I didn’t know they were going to do this, but you can rent it. You can rent the talk for $8.95.

Jen: That’s a nice option.

April: Isn’t it?

Jen: Yes.

April: Or you can buy it for $24.95, if you just must have it for your own and to listen to it again and again, streaming online. So we will put a link in the show notes to help people find that.

Jen: We certainly will.

April: Alright. Well, my goodness, believe it or not, we haven’t gotten to the end of our show sheet, my pal. Have we done it?

Jen: We have gently put the lid on Episode 58.

April: Indeed we have.

Jen:

April: Well, thanks to all of you for listening to The Big Sky Astrology Podcast. If you like what you’re hearing, we hope that you will subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. It really does seem to help us in the ratings and helps new people find our show. And if you would also like to leave a five-star rating, we would not object, and perhaps a review.

Jen: Perhaps. In fact, April, we had one, a few months ago from our friend, Sunny Mosley who wrote on bigskyastropod.com, Episode 37. “Listening to the two of you sharing stories and astrology has become my Monday morning delight. You bring a smile to my face and help me begin the week on a positive note, regardless of the astrological weather. Thank you.”

April: Aww, thank you Sunny. That’s really sweet.

Jen: Yes.

April: I like being the happy beginning to somebody’s Monday. That pleases me.

Jen: It makes me so happy that someone looks forward to hearing us every week.

April: I know. Well, we look forward to doing it every week. So…

Jen: And it boosts our self-esteem.

April: And it does.

Jen: Let’s be honest.

April: Well, you can also read show notes and full transcripts for each episode and leave comments like the very sweet one that Sonny did about each episode at our website, bigskyastropod.com.

Jen: And we’re super thankful to everyone who showed support during our Podathon back in September, each week, we’ll be thanking you by name. Who do we have this week, April?

April: This week, we want to give a Big Sky Astrology Podcast shout out to Sheila Lim and Anna Nordh.

Jen: Yay!

April: Yay!

Jen: Woohoo!

April: Well, we really do appreciate you both. And we want to thank you so much for listening to the show and supporting us in the Podathon. I’m afraid. I don’t know much about Sheila. I believe she’s in the Philippines. I knew Anna slightly when she lived here in San Diego some years ago.

Jen: Nice.

April: And these days she has my dream life on the central coast of California. So a salute to you, Anna, and thank you for listening to the show.

Jen: I thought your dreamlife was to move to Minneapolis?

April: That’s your dream for me, Jen.

April: In my real world, it’s 66° during the day. So…

Jen: well, thanks Sheila and thanks Anna. We really appreciate you both.

April: Thank you.

Jen: If you’re a listener who didn’t get a chance to support us during our Podathon, you can always make a donation at our website, bigskyastropod.com. And if you kick in $5 or more, we will invite you to a full year’s worth of our exclusive Solstice and Equinox episodes. And there’s a really important solstice coming up in a few weeks that will have lots of important information in that episode. Do you think that’s true, April?

April: Very much so.

Jen: Yes.

April: They will not want to miss it. Well, that’s it for us for this week. 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.

© 2020 April Elliott Kent & Jennifer Braun

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