Transcript for Episode 61 (Dec. 21, 2020)
The Great Conjunction of Jupiter & Saturn: We Feel Bloated!
Click here to read full show notes for the episodeJen: Welcome to the Big Sky Astrology podcast, with April Elliott Kent and me, producer and cohost Jen Braun. Hey friends, Jen here. Today is December 21st, 2020. And here with me as always is my friend who comes bearing water and looking merry and bright, Astrologer, April Elliott Kent. Hi, April.
April: I am a little bloated. So I guess that’s the bearing…
Jen: I’m going to have to have you say three good things about yourself right now.
April: Oh no. This is talking about a transient condition. I am not talking about my overall physique. I’m just saying, I am retaining a little water today.
Jen: You need to say three transient good things about yourself.
April: Well, this all of course is referring to Jupiter and Saturn.
Jen: She’s ignoring me.
April: I am. I am studiously ignoring you. We were talking today about, Aquarius, is really going to be featuring in our podcast in the coming weeks. And we’ve talked about this before, but a lot of people think that Aquarius is a water sign because it’s the water bearer, but it’s not. It is an air sign. So I suppose my temporary bloatedness really can’t be blamed on Aquarius at all.
Jen: Ah, don’t you worry podcast audience, I will have her say three good things about herself before the day is through.
April: I’m going to need some time to think about that.
Jen: And I will link to our first episode where I talked about you having to say three good things about yourself.
April: Oh, wow. Was that all the way back in the first episode?
Jen: First, Second, Third, pretty early on. I want to say.
April: Oh, pal. You’ve been trying to lift my self-esteem for a full year now.
Jen:
April: And you know? I was reminded of another episode of ours last night as I was watching Charlie Brown Christmas.
Jen: What’s that?
April: Well, I was looking at Charlie Brown’s shirt with a little, one half of the Aquarius glyph. So I was thinking of that episode we did about Aquarius season, which must be close to a year ago as well.
Jen: I believe that’s Episode 9, “It’s Aquarius S
eason, Charlie Brown.”
April: Oh, that’s back when we had so few episodes that you had memorized them all.
Jen: I wasn’t trying to memorize them. It just sticks in my brain.
April: It just happens.
Jen: I have no choice. Believe me.
April: When you spent an entire week editing an episode, I suppose it would stick with you.
Jen: Yes.
April: Well, my friend, this is the week that we have all been waiting for.
Jen: Of course.
April: Or maybe it’s just astrologers. I don’t think the whole world has been necessarily waiting for it.
Jen: Well, a lot of folks in the astrology community have been talking about it, for sure. And even astronomers and other folks in the media, I have heard talking about the big thing that’s happening this week, pal. Which is what?
April: Well, on the same day as the Capricorn Solstice, which is December 21st… that is a very full day. That is a lot of what we will be talking about on this episode. But on the same day as the Capricorn Solstice, Jupiter and Saturn will come together in a conjunction, same degree of the same sign, 0° and 29 minutes of Aquarius. And we’re going to tell you more about that in a few minutes.
Jen: Yes. It’s huge.
April: Yes. It is. But since technically the Solstice happens before that conjunction on December 21st at 2:03 AM Pacific Time when the Sun enters the sign of Capricorn and that initiates… because the Cardinal signs all initiate a new season of the year and the Sun entering Capricorn initiate winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. So this is the day of the year, when here in the Northern hemisphere, we have the shortest day and the longest night. The Sun is the lowest, it’s going to be in the sky at midday. And then after this day, it is slowly going to rise in the sky every day. And that I think is where we get some of the symbolism for Capricorn as being an ambitious sign that likes to have an objective, have a goal and take steps to reach it incrementally.
This is an appropriate time of year that we all begin to think about our resolutions for next year. Jen, you and I took a little time before we started recording today, musing about what we saw for ourselves in 2021. And this is an excellent time to be doing that.
Jen: Yes, Of course, Solstice comes from the Latin meaning, “Sun stands still.” For three days it holds in the sky at noon time. If you look up and it looks like it’s not moving any higher. And then as you say, it slowly starts climbing like that sea goat, which is the symbol of Capricorn.
April: Yes. It’s like it bounces. It gets this, “How low can you go?” It limbos all the way down in the sky.
Jen: The limbo.
April: Yes. The bounce, so now we’re going to start to see it slowly start to rise again.
Jen: Do you limbo?
April: Oh my God, are you kidding me? I’m surprisingly flexible for a woman of traditional build, as they say in the Lady’s Detective series.
Jen: Surprisingly flexible. She says.
April: Surprisingly flexible, but I’ve never tried to limbo. How about you?
Jen: I might have to make say six good things about yourself now because of the surprisingly part.
April: I am just telling the facts. Well, it is surprising you would look at me, I don’t look like a person who would be super supple and yet surprisingly. We’ve been limboing down with Capricorn, getting lower in the sky. Now, it is slowly… every day, it’s going to be a little bit higher in the noonday sky. Also, because it’s such a dark time of year overall, it is traditionally when we have festivals of light and we try to cheer ourselves up. I’ve been watching our neighborhood more and more lights appearing on the houses every night for the holiday. And I’m sure it’s visible from space. There were so many lights going on in this neighborhood.
Jen: San Diego just glows.
April: Yes. So we need to cheer ourselves up, often, at this time of year. And I think that’s part of what the light thing is and all the rest. Now, of course, Jen and I speak at great length about this Solstice in the special episode that we’ve produced. And we will be sending that out to everybody who’s made a $5 or more donation to the podcast, whether during the Podathon or you can even jump in on that now by just going to bigskyastropod.com, making a donation of $5 or more. And you can get in on that special extra top-secret episode.
Jen: We’d love to have folks join us. And this is a way to get a year’s worth of Solstice episodes, which look at each upcoming three-month segment of the year .
April: They do. And it’s our patented freewheeling, good natured, good time look at the next three months. So go ahead and have a look at that. Well, let’s talk about this Jupiter Saturn conjunction.
Jen: Okay. What can you tell us?
April: We’ve been talking… we’ve been alluding to it for a long time. And I know that back when Saturn initially went into Aquarius, which I want to say was in February or March?
Jen: I know that it was Episode 17 “Saturn in Aquarius, All in This Together.” And I want to say that that was March 22nd.
April: Ooh. That is very well done.
Jen: Give or take a day or two on either side. But it was around there.
April: Right. That’s right. Because it was the same time as the Equinox.
Jen: That’s right.
April: When Saturn was moving into Aquarius. So it went a small way into Aquarius, turned retrograde, went back into Capricorn to do its penance. And now, it is finally moving into Aquarius. So we do have a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn every 20 years, that’s its cycle. So the last Jupiter/Saturn conjunction we had was on May 28th, 2000. And that was at 22° and 43 minutes of Taurus. That was actually the last conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that will have an earth signs for almost 600 years.
Jen: Wow.
April: We had had it for about 200 years. We will have these great conjunctions in a particular element of the Zodiac.
Jen: Yes. Because, as you say, this does start a 20-year cycle, but it also starts at a 200 year cycle and an 800 year cycle. Can you explain that a little bit more?
April: Right. Well, the 200-year cycle has to do with the conjunctions coming together in signs of the same element. So we’ll have 200 years of Jupiter Saturn conjunctions in air signs. And conjunctions in air signs emphasize advancements in communication and innovation, we would say. As opposed to the conjunctions that we have for the last 200 years in earth signs, which neatly paralleled the industrial revolution and ways to bend the physical world to our will. And this takes on more of an air sign emphasis. So it’s more about thinking innovative thoughts and really using brain power to deal with whatever challenges we might face.
And the 800 years cycle is a cycle of the conjunctions going through signs of all the different elements. And the reason we’re sort of saying 800 years from here, it’s like, well, we’re at the beginning of a new element. And we’re also at this point where Jupiter and Saturn come together in a conjunction that it is so close, that the illusion, if you look at them in the sky, that it’s like one star.
Jen: Yes. It’s quite significant that we’re at this moment in history coming off of this year where we’ve seen so much change all around the world. And now we’re entering this new era in a way of moving through these air signs.
April: Right. And astrologers are noting that the last Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Aquarius back and 1405 was really at the dawn of the Renaissance. And we’re pinning a lot of hope on that. We’re thinking, “Wow, maybe this is time for a great leap forward as a society.”
On the other hand, I like to remind people that Aquarius is ruled by Saturn in traditional astrology. And so, any time we talk about significant progress as a world, as a civilization, it doesn’t happen overnight. And so we can’t expect that just because Jupiter and Saturn go into Aquarius, that everything in the world is going to shift immediately.
Jen: Yes. And in our personal lives as well. It takes time.
April: It does.
Jen: What else do we need to know about this, April?
April: Well, to bring it a little more down to earth, I mean, obviously it’s a really big conjunction and it’s a big moment. And what we will tell our listeners who are just interested. A lot of them, and they’re like, “Well, what does this mean for me?” Look for the point in your chart where 0° of Aquarius falls. And we will link as always in the show notes to an article that I wrote to try to help you locate that if he can’t easily do it.
Because the house that 0° Aquarius is in, any planets that you have near 0° of Aquarius or the other fixed signs, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio, are going to resonate with this Jupiter/Saturn conjunction. It may ultimately spell a new Renaissance for the world, but certainly it’s going to be a personal Renaissance for you, if you have planets close to this point. Jupiter rules expansion, Saturn rules structure. And whenever the two come together, there’s a lot of tension because the planets want different things.
And what we see is the beginning, it’s the seed planted of a large economic and political trend that will unfold over the 20-year cycle of Jupiter and Saturn as they square each other, as they oppose each other. And as that happens, we’ll begin to see a little more, what this moment will actually bring to us. Likely, for the world, it is going to point to even more digital and online based economy and further adjustment to the changes that technology has brought to society as a whole.
Jen: I think it’s really interesting that all of this Aquarius emphasis is happening, but we also have, let’s remember, the North Node in Gemini, which is an air sign. We have Mercury retrograde in air signs this year. And so there’s a lot of air emphasis this year coming up.
April: I’m welcoming it because we were really low on that last year.
Jen: We sure were.
April: And the one thing that we still lack is fire. And we won’t get that really until – I mean, we’ve had Mars in Aries doing a lot.
Jen: And then as the Moon moves through.
April: Yes. And the fast-moving planets. But the outer planets, we’re really not going to see a lot of fire until 2022 when Jupiter goes into Aries. So for now, at least we’re getting some air and we can take a deep breath.
Jen: Yes, for sure.
April: Now, as we said, the 21st is a big day, and Jen?
Jen: Yes, April?
April: Do you know another reason that that is?
Jen: Why is that?
April: Moonwatch…
Jen: Moonwatch…
April: Play it!
April: Oh, Jen, it just tickles me every time.
Jen: I enjoy it too.
April: Well, good. We come to praise the First Quarter Moon at 0° of Aries. We want to tell you all about that. But first of all, we need to talk to you about our non-imaginary sponsors.
Jen: Yes. For our non-imaginary sponsor. And one we’re very excited about.
April: That’s right. This is Faunabelle Tarot. We told you a little bit about their story last week. It’s a tarot deck that’s a specially designed for children. The creators, Juanita Benedicto and Nicola Allen have launched their Kickstarter as of December 19th to produce this beautiful tarot deck, especially for children. It is a beautiful melding of Nicola’s absolutely brilliant and charming illustrations. They’re adorable.
Jen: They are so cute.
April: We’re loving every one of them. And the soulful insights of professional astrologer and tarot reader, Juanita. Nicola is actually a lawyer turned children’s illustrator and Juanita is a librarian turned astrology/tarot reader.
Jen: And we also want to mention the two doggies that made it all possible.
April: Puppies!
Jen: Juanita’s Poppy and Nicola’s Yara, both came to their humans in a state where they had some needs, let’s say, but they are now healthy, happy, and entirely responsible for Faunabelle Tarot. Because Juanita and Nicola met each other at the dog park, which, I love that story.
April: I do too. Without Poppy and Yara, there would be no Faunabelle Tarot.
Jen: Yes for them.
April: Yes. The Faunabelle Tarot includes all the Major Arcana cards as well as the minor suit cards. And what’s so cute is each suit is represented by an animal. The Sword suit is symbolized by a cockatiel. The cups cards are symbolized by goldfish. So stinking cute. And Wands by doggies. And I remember picking one, one day and it was like a guy with a wand and four little puppies.
Jen: That’s so cute.
April: Every single one, so cute. And Pentacles are symbolized by a tortoise.
Jen: That’s really clever.
April: Yes. It is. So we hope that you’ll join us in helping these gorgeous cards come to life and become real live, hold them in your hands tarot decks.
Jen: Yes. So go to their website, starstoneandfable.com to view the artwork and to find out how to help them fund their Kickstarter campaign. We’ll put a link to both the website and the Kickstarter preview in our show notes. So please check them out. They’re really adorable.
April: We love them.
Jen: Yes.
April: We love you Faunabelle Tarot!
Jen: Okay, April. So what do we need to know about this First Quarter Moon that’s happening?
April: Well, the First Quarter Moon is at 0° Aries, the Aries point, the square of the Sun at the Solstice point. So there’s a lot of energy behind this First Quarter Moon and a lot of significance. And it is the first critical moment in the lunar phase family that began on March 24th, 2020 at 4° Aries. And I’d like to give a shout out to listener Celeste. You can find her on Instagram @AstrologyByCeleste, because she was the one that really wrote to us one time after she heard one of our episodes and hipped us to this phase family stuff. It’s really, really significant.
Jen: Yes. It’s really interesting.
April: Yes. And this First Quarter Moon also triggers last summer’s solar eclipse that happened at the Summer Solstice. So what I’m just really reading about this First Quarter Moon is it is bringing a lot of energy of action around the Solstice. Because it happens on the same day as the Solstice. So it’s, in one sense, a lot of new beginnings with the Sun entering the sign of Capricorn with Jupiter and Saturn coming together in a conjunction at the same sign. But the First Quarter is always a lunar phase that allows for forward motion. So we’re not going to just be in the dark static places of the conjunctions and the ingress, rather, we also have the ability to get out there and act on some things that perhaps we’ve been planning or thinking about.
If you look back to March 24th, which was the beginning of this phase family, we all know what March 24th looked like in 2020.
Jen: Right. March 24th was when the pandemic became a thing for a lot of us in the United States and around the world.
April: Yes. And that’s when we were really starting to lock down.
Jen: Yes.
April: Now, things are kind of moving forward apparently in that realm. We are looking at some vaccines, I guess, that have been developed and are being delivered to various places. And that seems to be some forward motion. Again, this Aquarius stuff is ruled by Saturn. I don’t honestly think that just overnight, they’re going to have a vaccine that is going to be completely available and affordable to everybody. I think that’s probably going to take some time, but at least at this First Quarter Moon, there is a hopeful message of forward motion in the things that began in March.
Jen: You are saying, this will take a while to roll out across of course the US but also around the world to other countries and to get the vaccine to people. That’s what you’re saying?
April: Yes. I was writing in my column for last week and when we were having the solar eclipse in Sagittarius and Sagittarius is of course a traveling sign among other things. And I was writing that a Facebook friend posted a picture of himself in an airport, and I was just overcome by a wave of nostalgia. I have really been missing being able to travel. And I know for a lot of people, this has been very serious. I mean, people have been stuck in foreign countries and not able to get to their homes or travel to see family and things like that. So that’s kind of what I’m seeing is significant perhaps at this First Quarter Moon.
Jen: Well, very good. What do we have next on the show sheet, pal?
April: Next up, we have a square between Mars and Pluto on December 23rd at 06:44 AM Pacific Time. I liked the Sabian symbols so much for Mars and Pluto at this square.
Jen: What are they?
April: The Sabian symbol for Mars is “An open Window and a Net Curtain Blowing into a Cornucopia.” I know we’ve had that one in the past. I know I just love it.
Jen: It’s lovely.
April: It’s very evocative. And the Sabian symbol for 24 Capricorn is “A Woman Entering a Convent.” Which also – I must have been at a convent another life. I absolutely love that Sabian symbol. And I equate it with such peacefulness and introspection. So they’re such beautiful symbols for an aspect that can often be problematic.
Jen: Totally. The conjunction happened March 22nd or 23rd, depending on where you live on the planet. And if folks want to hear about the point at which this story began, you can go back to Episode 17, “Saturn in Aquarius, All in This Together.” And this is the third of three squares. When were the other two?
April: The other two were on August 13th and October 9th. So we covered the August 13th one on Episode 38, “Taurus Last Quarter Moon, but Wait, There’s S’More.” And the October 9th, when was Episode 50, “The Grand Cross: Wheel! Of! Fortune!” So the nice thing is you can go back also to that episode that you were talking about with the conjunction between Mars and Pluto, and that’s also when we had the New Moon at 4° of Aries
Jen: Yes
April: Which we were just talking about in the first quarter.
Jen: Yes.
April: So, re-listen to that one will bring a lot of this stuff together. Well, Mars is about the exertion of personal will, the way we get what we want, defend ourselves, go into battle for personal reasons, Pluto on the other hand is about forces larger than ourselves. So when Mars and Pluto come together and especially in a square which has a little bit of a combative aspect, we can either be crushed under Pluto’s larger forces, or we can use our personal energy and will in the service of something larger than ourselves. And that’s a little bit of the picture I get with the woman entering the convent as well. You know?
Jen: Yes. I like that. It is a way to use the energy of this aspect, which can be seen traditionally as pretty difficult, in a positive way?
April: Yes. If you try to exert your personal well or you get combative or aggressive with people, it is likely to really backfire on you because Pluto kind of won’t stand for that. Pluto is not impressed by our personal objectives, our personal will. Pluto instead is connected with the collective and with really large forces. And unless we decide to align with those, Pluto, usually won’t be super kind with us. So what you often see on the ground during Mars Pluto connections is, people having power struggles, people having really ugly arguments, people trying to get their own way and being denied. Think back to August 13th and October 9th and what was going on for you, especially in the realm of work, which is related to Mars, or really just kind of in any way that you’ve been trying to get something done or trying to get your own way.
I think we’ve all learned the way these things usually work is we learn from the first and second aspects in a series. And by the third one, we kind of get it.
Jen: Yes.
April: And hopefully by now we’ve decided, I think kind of through the whole pandemic, what we’ve been seeing is a lot of people on different sides of the whole pandemic situation and also trying to figure out – because we’ve also had such a Neptune influence this year, and it’s been hard to know sometimes what to believe and what the reality is of things? And people have really been examining that. And more and more people have come to some sharp disagreements about the best way to handle this kind of situation in our country.
Jen: I look at those Sabian symbols and it reminds me to maybe have a focus on quiet gratitude. That could be helpful as we go through this week.
April: I like that.
Jen: Yes. I love learning about how the human brain works. I think that’s really fascinating, the neuroscience of it all. And our brains are wired to reinforce what we attend to. So that’s why I think, especially right now, a focus on gratitude might be so important as opposed to focusing on what’s going wrong. If we focus on what’s going, right, it can be a way to help put our brain in a more positive state of mind too.
April: I like that. And I think the idea of mental wiring also is appropriate as we discuss Mercury trine Uranus, which is happening on December 24th, on Christmas Eve.
Jen: What a great segue.
April: Yes. And the Sun trine Uranus on December 27th. I always think Mercury is about wiring, but Uranus is about leaps of intuition and it’s about the ways we get inspired and are able to look at things in a different way. And I always tell people when I’m doing readings, if I see a transit of Uranus coming through a particular area of their chart or interacting with planets, the thing I like to tell them is “All of the patterns that you have been playing out for your whole life, you can now change. You can actually do it in a different way and think of yourself in a different way.” So that is the promise of Uranus. Uranus can be disconcerting if we’re trying really hard to hang on to the status quo. And we’re going to talk about that a lot in 2021.
But if we’re willing to give ourselves over to these leaps of innovation and imagination, Uranus can be really terrific. So I like what you’re saying about the rewiring of the brain, because Mercury trine Uranus is an easy opportunity to do that. And maybe it’s, as we’re going into the holidays, around that time that this might be something to do with the way you approach this particular unusual holiday season or communications with your family about it. And the Sun trine Uranus a few days later is somewhat similar. It is the ways in which we embrace what is different about us.
Jen: Okay. And Mercury and Uranus are both thought of as the planets of, oh, what is it called?
April: Well, we would say the planets of the mind and of communication. And I think what you’re thinking is that Uranus is thought of as the higher octave of Mercury.
Jen: Thank you. Yes. That is what I was trying to come up with. And it wasn’t there because I’m having a Neptune transit.
April: We’ve all been there, pal. And if we haven’t been, we will be. Neptune comes to us all, eventually.
Jen: Yes.
April: Yes. Because, Mercury is kind of again, on a lower level, it’s about, if you send an email to someone, that is one level of Mercury. But if you create an entire different platform for people to communicate with each other, like a social media application or something, that’s Uranian.
Jen: Yes.
April: It’s like it’s connecting more people and bigger ideas and bigger thoughts. So having the two connecting in a trine, it’s a very fast aspect. It’s a couple of days. If I’m doing a reading for someone, I’m not going to be talking about Mercury trine Uranus by transit. But, what it does is give us an opening and that’s what we want to alert people to. Then on Christmas Eve, there’s this possibility, this opening to sit and think brilliant thoughts and later share them with the world.
Jen: That’s excellent.
April: Yes.
Jen: Hopefully, we will all have some brilliant thoughts that we can gently share.
April: At least they’ll seem brilliant to us because Mercury and the Sun are still relatively close together. So at least we’ll think we’re brilliant.
Jen: Oh yes. And Mercury is still out-of-bounds. We still got that going on.
April: Oh my gosh. And it’s been crazy.
Jen: Yes.
April: It really has been like Mercury’s been retrograde around here for the last week.
Jen: Yes.
April: Well, my friend, we have made it to the end of another show sheet. Have we done it?
Jen: We are standing still and waving goodbye to everyone from Episode 61.
April: Yes.
Jen: Just like the Sun stand still. We are standing still
April: That’s right. Well, thanks to all of you for listening to The Big Sky Astrology Podcast. If you like what you’re hearing, be sure to subscribe and also leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. We hope that you’ll help us spread the word. Tell a friend about the show or maybe share it in your social media. You can read show notes and full transcripts and leave your comments about each episode at our website, bigskyastropod.com.
Jen: We’re super grateful to everyone who showed support during our September Podathon. Each week we thank one or two of you by name. Who do we have this week, April?
April: Oh, this week, we want to give a Big Sky Astrology Podcast shout out to Debra Nehring and Suzanne O’ Claire.
Jen: Yes…
April: Yes…
April: Suzanne was actually one of the winners of our Podathon drawing. She won a 60-minute reading with me.
Jen: Oh, yes.
April: And we had a lovely chat. And Debra is our second donor in two weeks to hell from our beloved neighbor to the North, Canada. And I just want to assure Debra of my love of Tim Hortons and of the show, “Corner Gas.” Now, there you go. That’s probably a sum total of my knowledge of Canadian culture, but Debora and Suzanne, we appreciate you both so much. And we want to thank you for listening to our podcast and supporting us during the Podathon.
Jen: We really appreciate you. If you’re a listener who did not get a chance to support us during our Podathon, and if you would like to, you can always make a donation at our website, bigskyastropod.com. If you contribute $5 or more, we will invite you to this special Solstice episode that we were talking about earlier, as well as a full year’s worth of Equinox and Solstice episodes.
April: Well, that is it for us this week. Please 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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