0:00 Hey, my name is Chris Brennan and you're listening to the astrology podcast. Joining me today is astrologer Austin Copic and we're going to be looking at the astrology of May 2025. Hey Austin, uh, welcome back. You're looking especially prophetic today. It's the haircut. Thank you. The haircut. I do appreciate a good haircut. Um, so we have got a great show lined up today. We're going to spend the first hour of this episode talking about news and events and how it coincided with the astrology over the past month since our last forecast episode. Then in the second half of the episode, we're going to do a deep dive into the astrology of May and give our forecasts about some of the planetary alignments coming up over the next month. So, uh, as always, you can use the timestamps in the description below this episode on YouTube or on the podcast website if you
0:46 want to skip forward to the forecast episode, but otherwise before we start the news section, I wanted to first give you a quick overview and preview of some of the transits we're going to be talking about later in this episode. So, first things first, here is the planetary alignments calendar, which shows uh where the planets will start at the beginning of the month and how far through the signs of the zodiac they will get by the end of the month. Here is the planetary aspects calendar designed by Maline Dotes from honeycomb.co where they make some lovely almanacs and personalized reports and this shows you some of the different aspects and things that peak during the course of the month. Um, one that I'm particularly interested in and curious about happens later in the month where
1:31 the sun will conjoin Uranus on the 17th and Mercury will square Mars uh the same day around the same time period. So, we'll be paying attention to and talking about that later in the episode. Here's the planetary alignments calendar. So in terms of major aspects and ingresses and other alignments this month, we open the month with Venus conjoining Neptune right at the beginning of Aries on May 2nd. Then a couple days later on the 4th, Pluto stations retrograde and there's an intensification of that transit on the 4th of May. Then later that week, Mercury moves into Taurus on the 10th. There's a full moon in Scorpio on the 12th. Sun conjoins Uranus on the 17th followed by Mercury squaring Mars within 24 hours. The sun enters Aries or
2:18 sorry enters Gemini I should say on the 20th and then we get a big outer planet shift which is Saturn moving into the sign of Aries on the 24th. Then Mercury goes into Gemini the next day. Then there's a new moon in Gemini or second lunation on the 26th. And finally there's a Mercury Kazmi in Gemini on the 30th of May. So, those are some of the alignments. And the big one this month that we're going to be spending a lot of time talking about is Saturn moving into Aries on the 24th because that is the start of a three-year long transit of of Saturn through that sign. But it's also the buildup to the Saturn Neptune conjunction which becomes extremely close this summer, especially around July and Saturn joining Neptune and
3:05 Aries is a really important turning point. All right. So, those are some of the transits that we're going to be talking about later in this episode. But first things first, let's talk about some news and other things since um our last episode. So, first things first, how you doing, Austin? Checking in. You as a Cancer rising, I'd like to congratulate you for surviving uh Mars retrograde in Cancer. Good job. Thank you. I uh I didn't get tetanus. That's That's a plus. That's a plus. I I almost got tetanus. It was funny. I was um uh I was teaching class right as Mars was creeping back up on my ascendant for the third time and I told a story about how I gave myself tetanus by uh
3:51 accidentally impaling myself on a rusty nail about like 3/4 of an inch deep maybe 22 years ago. Um and I was like, "Oh, haha." And um my knee swoll up like a grapefruit. I had to get a tetanus shot, etc., etc. And then two days later, uh I was helping a friend uh tear apart like a an old deck. I was doing like some light demolition and um I I felt a little scratch. Um but I looked down and it didn't um like the there was a little little screw, but it didn't even go through my sweatpants and so I wasn't worried about it. And then I look at my leg later and it was a shallow but very long and completely ragged wound. Um and so that took two weeks to heal.
4:38 And so I was just looking at I was like did I get tetanus? Is Mars going to give me tetanus again? Um tetanus of course is like the the disease uh it is the bacteria that lives on iron. So it's a very marshall disease, right? It makes your muscles lock up like crazy. It's called lock jaw, right? you couldn't imagine a more marshall bacteria that thrives on rust. Um, so I just barely didn't get tetanus again. Um, and so for that I'm grateful. Nice. Good job. Yeah. Other, you know, that's interesting just cuz like well for one, one of the things we'll talk about is other cancer risings didn't fare as well. Um the Pope being the most notable example who was born with cancer rising and that Mars retrograde put him in the hospital for over a month and then eventually
5:24 culminated you know weakened him significantly and then just after Mars departed from cancer is when he passed away. Um and we'll talk about that more in just a little bit. But it was a good reminder that sometimes when we have difficult transits through a rising sign, like it can take a chunk out of you and sometimes that can leave you with a lasting scar or sometimes physical impression um that you either carry through your life or you know and have literal scars from or other times it can leave um some other types of lasting impressions on you. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I still have a little scar on my my right knee from where I got stabbed with a rusty nail. Okay. Yeah. So, um good job to everybody that made it through Mars and Cancer.
6:11 So, I guess let's talk about some of our early news stories, um which really centered on Mars and Cancer at the very beginning of the month because at the beginning of April, we were still coming out of eclipse season. Eclipse season was still in effect essentially for at least the first week or so of April. Um, Mars was still coming off of its recent station and it was passing through the later degrees of cancer in wrapping up that very long retrograde period which initially started last September when Mars first went into Cancer, but then really intensified at the beginning of the year in January when Mars retrograded and returned back to Cancer and then station direct in February. So, um, the biggest news stories cuz you know there are a ton of news stories
6:57 this month. So, I'm only going to focus on like a handful of them that we actually have something astrological to say about. Um, but the early stories at the beginning of April were all dominated by um, Trump and tariffs and uh, the economy and immigration, which were all Mars and Cancer things that we've already been talking about a lot over the past few months, but that seemed like they hit a major culmination and turning point in both of those areas. So the first one is that Trump at the beginning of April launched um on something he was calling liberation day an extreme round of tariffs against virtually every country in the world. Um and this started to it was so extreme
7:42 that it started to destabilize the global economy but also the US economy. And after several days of things really getting out of control, the US bond market started um getting really bad and showing really negative signs that would have ne negative repercussions for the US. And then Trump was forced to backtrack and like walk like backtrack that and walk out of that to some extent in order to reverse some of the damage. Um, so he still then proceeded to escalate a trade war with China which hit a fever pitch over the course of the next few weeks. But I think you and a Austin Austin, you and I both noticed that after Mercury station direct and
8:28 Venus station direct by the middle of the month that um things started to temporarily stabilize a bit as he was forced to walk back some of those extreme tariffs and um sort of take the country and the world back from the brink of something much more like devastating and and problematic. Yeah. Um and just to go Yeah. to to look back at the beginning of April, right? We're still within the shadow of the eclipses. Mercury and Venus were both still retrograde. Mars is still in Cancer. Um and as you just said, it was um shortly after the Mercury direct station on the 6th and right at the edge of Venus's direct station um that we got the
9:13 suspension of the majority of the tariffs. Um, and as I was saying to you yesterday, um, I, you know, I looked at the suspension. I was like 90 days from today is right when Uranus moves into Gemini. And so we will be looking we will be looking at that uh for July. But the um the de the delayed until date um is within 48 hours of Uranus's historic movement into Gemini, which has never been a stabilizing factor. And so that story is um not over, but is at least for now um for now stabilized. And it also made me think about the initial so
10:00 the initial um uh the initial numbers with the retaliatory tariffs which if we're talking about Mars and cancer um and um protectionism um and wanting wanting to protect even if one is not doing so effectively um and also retaliate against uh uh uh perceived slights. Um, you know, these were retaliatory tariffs. Um, but it reminds me supposedly Yeah. Well, that was that was how they were built, right? Um, and and what's interesting is that the the math um and the calculations uh on that initial round of tariffs were basically universally criticized would be a gentle way to put it. And I I I remembered us
10:48 talking about what a terrible position Mercury was in for the first part of the month. Um being in in in its sign of fall and retrograde and conjunct Saturn and conjunct the the eclipse point of the North Node like could you'd be hardressed to find a Mercury that was technically in a worse position. And we, you know, we we had all that, we had all of that that math on um was it liberation day, immolation day, whatever. Um and so that was uh that that stood out to me, the terrible Mercury in addition to the the general like protectionist um and uh retaliatory mars and cancer quality. That's an
11:34 amazing point. I didn't you hadn't we talked you hadn't mentioned that yesterday when we talked but that's a really brilliant point because the parallel later in the month was like Venus station direct conjunct Saturn and then you got like the spaceship with Katy Perry with the the women that traveled to space but then came back and were heavily criticized for it whereas the parallel you're talking about is earlier in the month like Mercury stationing direct conjunct Saturn in its fall and Mercury's since ancient times in like Vadius Valins is associated with merkantile things in the markets. Um so yeah, that was pretty crazy because the numbers were just like wildly high and um not without much basis. But even after lowering them, he still left a 10%
12:20 tariff in place on almost all countries, I think. So the tariffs were not fully removed and the damage was already done significantly to a lot of supply lines and other things like that. So that the true impact of some of these tariffs may not be felt fully. We may not see the full impact until later this year, later in the summer or early in the fall is what some of the economists are saying. And I thought that was interesting because then um if a lot of this was launched under this eclipse season, then the next key turning point could be the eclipse season that's coming up in September, especially when we get the next set of eclipses in Virgo and Pisces. Yeah, that's a great point. Um, and I think that that ties into the fact that both Mercury and Venus station
13:07 direct station direct with Saturn. You know, Saturn, which is the planet of things that are long, slow, and lasting and our next set of eclipses is um magnificently configured to Saturn. And so like the the slower consequences being promised under this configuration. And yeah, I think that's that's very smart. and likely delivered under the next set which is also Satnian, right? Yeah. So that makes sense. And then both you and I are looking at parallels with the past, especially past Venus retrograde cycles since this is still coinciding with and overlapping with that. I'm very nervous about that. Um, this current period we've been in
13:53 with Venus retrograde in Aries and Mars retrograde in Cancer is actually a repetition of the same exact configuration that happened early in 1929. And what happened then if if this was any sort of repeat this year is that the markets did get destabilized around this time of the year in the first half of 1929 and showed early warnings of what was to come. But then the actual market crash happened later in the year in like October. So if we were to have a repetition of any sort of that then we would be looking at um this initial period of setbacks that we've just gone through. Uh but then things coming back and being worse after like a temporary
14:40 reprieve for the next few months. Uh running into to really difficult weather later in the year in the fall. Yeah. And so the the parallels there was u were the in 1929 were the Mars cycle and the Venus cycle, right? Yeah. Like in the exact same signs and retrograde in Aries and retrograde in Cancer cuz those two repeat every 32 years. So the other repetitions are like 1983, 1961, and then 1929. Over the past century, that that's happened three times, and it's it connects all of those years. Yeah, that's really nice. And so you'd mentioned that to me the other day and I thought about I was like oh what's eight years later for the next Venus repetition and it was 1937 and I was like wasn't there like a a very
15:27 meaningful secondary recession like in the middle of the great depression that extended it and lo and behold there was and so the uh the secondary recession which took things um uh about halfway back to the very worst numbers of the Great Depression. It basically jumped things back. Uh it basically um sort of erased three three or four years of good progress out of uh the Great Depression. Um and so that was spring of 1937 and it was Venus retrograde uh in Aries. Again, the Mars cycle is not synced up, but it was at exactly the same point with Saturn. It was Saturn at the end of Pisces entering Aries. And so um uh
16:15 yeah, you have a twopoint parallel there. And so that was uh that return uh that return to depression in 37 lasted about 13 months um and was a very serious setback um when people when things had started to go well. And what's interesting what's interesting to note that's not uh what's interesting to note is that a number of economists um look back at that recession and it's sometimes called the Roosevelt recession um and they um they attribute uh as a cause um uh rapid and sloppy cost cutting measures by the government um which is um certainly not the cause of the recent financial chaos that has been
17:02 happening. It's the, you know, the the tariffs that um have set all this in motion. But it is really interesting to see that that was also happening um uh during the 1937 parallel. People were like, "Oh, you cut too much too quick and it caused problems." Okay. Yeah, that is interesting. Um and then elsewhere I'm seeing a lot of discussion about something called the VIX index which um tries to track fear or uncertainty that people have about the market. And um all the an analysts are saying that this index is currently the highest that it's been in terms of fear and uncertainty since the COVID pandemic in 2020. Um let me see if I can actually share that for the video
17:49 viewers. Yeah. So here it is just for those watching the video version. This is this like quote unquote fear index and you can just see it like spiking right now in 2025 um becoming the highest that it's been since 2020 and prior to that the highest spikes was of course like the great financial crash and recession of like 2008 2009. So this is important because um a large part of the economy is based on like people invest money when they feel like there's stability and certainty and they can like anticipate what's coming up next. But part of what's happening is that the erraticness of Trump and the tariffs and the, you know, they're on
18:36 again, they're off again, they're on again, off again is creating so much uncertainty that it's causing people to start becoming much more conservative financially in terms of not spending and not um not investing because people are worried about the future and and things getting more unstable with the economy. And what's interesting is from an astrological perspective, of course, Uranus has been passing over Trump's midheaven, which is at 24° of Taurus. Um, but it's like when Uranus goes into Gemini in July, like that's his Uranus return as well as Uranus moving into his sun sign, which is the ruler of his Leo ascendant. So, we would only we we could only expect like an increase of that
19:22 sort of like erratic quality with Uranus going into an even more prominent place in his chart starting in July. So, that's one of the things that you and I have been talking about just in terms of like if uncertainty is part of the issue right now or erraticness, Uranus going to Gemini seems like it would not be helpful in terms of that. Yeah. And historically, right, the the the Uranus return of the United States, Uranus and Gemini, has so far never been a terribly st terribly stable time. It's always been um the the LA it's always been a big uh a big scary destabilizing deal. Yeah. Of like a major war and conflict either internally or externally. Yeah.
20:08 Yeah. So, and again, and and just to reiterate, like and so Uranus moves into Gemini about 48 hours before the um 90-day suspension of or yeah, 90-day suspension of some of the of the tariffs expires. So, the tariffs expire right after Uranus moves into Gemini, right? Although, it's like that's one of the questions I have is we've seen the tariffs coincide with Mars and Cancer. That's something I had found historically as well because the Smoot Holly tariffs in the early 1930s were also like Mars retrograde in Cancer. So I'm very curious like um do we see further escalations of that or does Mars and moving out of Cancer remove some of
20:54 the impulse that was there to put some of those in place is just a abstract question I have just for the future as an astrologer at this point. Yeah, it's a great question. Well, and and we talked about um like you know we talked about the time frame of that like to what degree are uh are the tariff are the tariffs the retaliatory tariffs um particularly Mars and Cancer and to what degree are we looking at um part of the battleground for Neptune in Aries because in the past whenever Neptune has been in Aries there has been a lot of conflict and I joked last episode that um we were the United States was doing better than the historical norm because
21:40 we had not uh we had not entered into a hot civil war within one day of the ingress which is what happened uh during the previous time that Neptune went into Aries for the United States. Um the civil war went hot and officially began about a day after the ingress. But this time we did get within 3 days the beginning of um what was largely built as a trade war. And so if we're looking at what uh what dream of what dream of war and conflict and contention Neptune and Aries brings, um the fact that um a trade war was sparked within 3 days of the ingress seems hard to ignore as a um a warning, a
22:26 uh a sizzle reel, a trailer. um even if it um you know even if it cooled off meaningfully since then but and then the way that ties into the Mars and Cancer of course is that Neptune in Aries is in Mars' sign and so what's happening in Aries is very sensitive to whatever Mars is doing. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you and I had the same thought about that because I was thinking seeing the language that both Trump and the US and China were using in early April as this trade war was like escalating rapidly. um really made me wonder if we weren't going to look back on this in retrospect and realize that a more open conflict in the future ended up that this ended up
23:14 being the precursor that the precursor it all started with like a trade war between the US and chi China that started in like basically April of 2025. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that is unfortunate. One last thing to mention about the economy I just want to mention in passing is now people are talking about stagflation being an issue potentially coming up in the future. And I thought this was funny because I actually first mentioned this last summer as a concern that I had when um Jupiter and Saturn were going to square each other while Jupiter was also squaring Neptune. um because we had seen inflation be a huge issue back when Jupiter conjoined Neptune several years ago in like the 2022 2023 time frame. So I think it
24:01 would be really interesting if because that didn't end up happening last summer on the first or the second Jupiter Saturn square that happened in like August or December, but it would be interesting if it did hit on the third and final square that's coming up here pretty soon like over the course of the next few months. I think like June, July time frame when when Jupiter squares Saturn and Neptune. Um, so that's something I'll be paying attention to that possibility for for stagflation or for inflation to start becoming an issue again, right? And stagflation is high inflation with stagnant wage growth, just to define that. So things keep getting more expensive, but you don't make any more money, right? basically, which things are going to get more expensive because
24:48 of the tariffs. Um, and that's one of the things that's coming in down the pipeline like really soon due to this 10% tax basically being put on everybody which is going to be passed on to to consumers. All right, so that was one huge part of Mars and Cancer and finishing up that transit. The other major part of Mars and Cancer that dominated the news, especially in the United States, which is our primary audience, was the continued intense focus on immigration and in particular the plight of some men who had been sent to this really extreme prison in El Salvador. And um I I I watched this like YouTube video that was like this 20-minute documentary that was made. It
25:34 was released earlier this year. So I think it was made before Trump came into office, but it was about this prison in El Salvador called Secot that all these these guys are being sent to. Um the YouTube video is titled the world's highest security prison, Secott by Ruhi Sinet. And I'd really recommend people watch it because I was actually like shocked and and honestly kind of sickened after I watched this like seeing what this place was actually like because it was I've seen like highsecurity prisons and like the status of prisoners and stuff in different places, but this is much more extreme than anything I I expected. Um, did you end up watching that, Austin? I did. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's basically
26:19 the most maximum security prison in the world. Um, it was Yeah, it was um built to house the most murderous people um possible. And so the idea of somebody who's like, you know, um uh violated an immigration visa going to um like literally the highest security prison in the world with the most dangerous people possible um is uh both absurd and horrifying. Um yeah, the one of the um standout features is that the cells house between like 60 and 70
27:05 people like Yeah, 60 and 70 people. Like they're all packed on top of each other. They're sleeping on slabs, the lights on constantly, which in like other contexts is actually how you torture people is to like keep the lights on and and encourage sleep deprivation. Um it's just really extreme. Like I'd really recommend people watching it because I didn't understand the full context of like most of the discussion is about the lack of due process and how the rights are being stripped from people that aren't getting their day in court um to fight charges which ultimately in some instances were false and were mistakes and and the the Trump administration itself acknowledged that it was a mistake that one of the people was um deported in the way that he was but then subsequently refused to
27:52 bring him back. But there's this whole other element to it just in the extreme the fact that they're being sent to like one of the most extreme prisons in the world. That's a dimension I don't think most people are realizing or able to see until you've like seen inside it. Yeah. It's um I mean I didn't know prisons like that existed. Yeah. So, I bring that up just because of a sort of continuation of our discussion last month where we were talking about how in ancient astrology the uh the depression or the fall of a planet um is sometimes referred to as its prison and that's opposite to the sign of its exaltation which is referred to as its throne. And in this instance with Mars and Cancer, we had this this focus on what becomes one of the world's
28:38 now most famous and and most extreme maximum security prisons um in El Salvador. So I thought that was interesting astrologically. And then also a lot of the drama this month was Trump defied a Supreme Court order to help facilitate the return of one of the people that was mistakenly sent there, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Um, and both Trump and the president of Al Salvador refused. And there's continued to be drama surrounding that. But I thought that was just a continued expression of Mars and Cancer, not just with prisons, but also obviously with the broader things that have been unleashed during this Mars retrograde in Cancer with um the US and Trump and its immigration policy and the
29:24 way immigrants are being handled. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of that actually in relevant because I you know I also had the reaction that it was the most I couldn't think of a analogy to the prison without thinking going back to like the concentration camps and stuff from World War II. And obviously it's not as bad or extreme of that but I was having a hard time thinking of something that was like comparable. And I did see a tweet by um that was interesting by George Takai who um said that this was the 83y year anniversary of when the Japanese internment camps were opened up in the
30:10 US during World War II. And that was actually really striking because 83 years is one of the longest term planetary periods of Jupiter known as the Babylonian Golar periods. So this is a perfect repetition of that of a of a a very long-term 83 Jupiter year period and we have a similar issue taking place in terms of the US and its courts and how uh groups of people are being treated. So, I just thought that was striking in terms of a recurrence of Jupiter and some of the themes having to do with like the law and the courts and the treatment of um people from other countries in the US um and having a recurrence of this this sort of
30:55 mistreatment that gets sort of quasi um allowed by the courts and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. That that's a striking parallel. I mean because Jupiter of course is is about how justice gets done or the you know the attempt to make things fair and just and benefitic and this particular cycle doesn't seem to be a particularly bright and shining moment for the United States in regard to those Jupiterian topics. Yeah, justice. That's the word I was looking for. Thank you. Um, all right. So, uh, only other thing in this section is a quick ZR side note. Like, we had always wondered for years, you know, that Trump's 19-year peak period in
31:43 Zodak releasing was going to start on April 20th, 2024. And we always wondered what that would be going back to like the 2016 election because it was so weird that that was so far in the future. And then even in the runup to this current election, there was a curious question about like why that started a few months later. And so I was paying attention to what happened. And something I noticed just a few days after he began it is that on April 24th, Trump's official website started selling a Trump 2028 hat um in like runup to basically saying that they're going to start warming people up to the idea of him removing the term limit and running for another term. And his son Eric posted a photo of him wearing that hat that day, which Elon
32:30 Musk then tweeted and promoted. So, I talked about this a little last month, but I thought it was very striking and coinciding with the zodiac releasing peak period beginning that they're basically slow launching him having two terms. And this of course makes me nervous cuz something similar happened in Russia and China over the past few decades where um it essentially resulted in a single person taking over and becoming the leader of the country indefinitely and effectively removing term limits that were previously in place as part of those governments. So I think we may be seeing something similar happen here since otherwise the two-term limited is something built into the the US Constitution ever since almost a century ago. Right. Well, and it's it's
33:16 striking because the last time America did its Uranus return um we had FDR who served who I believe won four elections and it was subsequently it was after FDR's last well a after his death um that what had always been agreed upon um as two terms was then written into law. Right? And so coming into the Uranus the the Uranus return once again um we see that at least symbolically being challenged already. Yeah. And it's like with FDR he was in the middle of World War II when he then got into that third term. But then with with Trump here we're seeing
34:03 this before, you know, there's even a conflict or anything like that. It's just a desire to continue having power control. But then with Uranus return coming up, then the issue is going to become what happens if a major conflict does break out and then there is a greater excuse to attempt to extend the term limits or what have you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, moving on to other news. The other probably biggest piece of news that happened this month under the biggest alignment or one of the biggest alignments that we really focused on for the end of April was there was that Mars Pluto opposition um that happened late in April and the the pope uh Pope Francis ended up dying
34:49 under that Mars Pluto opposition when it was triggered by the moon which exactly conjoined Pluto um reportedly at at the time that he passed away. So, he passed away on April 21st, 2025, reportedly at 7:36 a.m. And I ended up um casting the chart for that and was very struck by the not just of course the Mars Pluto opposition with Mars at one degree of Leo and Pluto at 3° of Aquarius and the sun had just moved into a T-square with them at 1° of Taurus, but the moon was exactly at 3° of Aquarius um triggering
35:35 everything and conjoining Pluto at three Aquarius when when it happened with that moon Pluto conjunction right at the midheaven. So, um I thought that was a really good example of just something we've seen a lot over the past few years where sometimes we'll see a difficult configuration of planets of either outer planets or middle inner planets. But then it's with the moon swoops in and like conjoins or makes a hard aspect to those that it acts as a trigger that shows the full timing of the event. Um, and in that instance it was it was very dramatic. So he passed away on the 21st and then what was additionally striking was his funeral happened several days later on April 26th and that was the
36:22 very day of the Mars Pluto opposition. And um I I've been reading about Mesopotamian and astrology more recently. And one of the things I was reading about was how Mars was originally associated with the god Nurgle which was the god of the underworld. And it was really striking then that we had like the ancient Mesopotamian god of the underworld Mars exactly opposing the you know Roman god of the underworld Pluto. Um and then we have this very famous um person and world leader essentially religious leader who passed away and who world leaders all flew into Europe to mourn uh on the day of that opposition. Yeah. Yeah. the excuse me um the death
37:09 symbolism is very strong with both Mars and Pluto together unfortunately and that was not that was not the only death that that configuration brought us sadly. Yeah, we'll talk about that in just a second. One last point, I already mentioned this in passing, but we do have a time chart roughly for Pope Francis and he had he was born with cancer rising um reportedly at 900 p.m. So maybe about 10 Cancer rising give or take. And so we can see how the Mars retrograde which retrograded back into cancer and then stationed there in February and then he he got sick with pneumonia and he was in the hospital for over a month and you could tell when he returned from that he was in really
37:57 rough shape like he was not in good shape coming back from that. Um, but as I said earlier that in that you can kind of see sometime how retrogrades can really impact you especially in terms of your physical vitality in your body when they happen especially in the rising side of the first house. Yeah. Um, I I got to tell you, just the last couple days now that we're starting to get away from the Mars Pluto and we're done with the Mars and Cancer, I've just been like feeling so amazing physically. I'm like, I don't feel like So, I've been working really hard um to not feel like and to like keep up. Um, but I started feeling um like I could do more. Like I was like, you know, it was it was
38:43 the first time in eight months where I was like, maybe you should push yourself a little harder. You've got this extra energy. And I was like, what the is this? I was like, oh, we're finally out of all of the Mars afflictions. Um it was yeah, it was it was um it was notable to not have that um that affliction from Mars in the first or um right out of there in a post Pluto as it has been since the beginning of September. Nice. Nice. Um, yeah. So, other than that, it's like Pope Francis was also in his third Saturn return in Pisces with his natal Saturn at like 16° of Pisces and there were other things going on there. But, um, that really fell right
39:29 on that opposition and and it was a very striking manifestation of that in different ways. Yeah. Um, moving on, other things related to that. So, we had talked a lot in the past few months about the US and Iran. And it seems like the outcome of the Aries eclipse was that um that was right when Iran agreed to start having talks with the US after like weeks and months of saying that they wouldn't have talks with the US for a while, especially direct talks. Um but then the US started positioning itself for an attack on Iran. And then it seemed like right on that Aries eclipse, Iran realized what was coming essentially and relented. Um, and talks have still been ongoing, but it's still not clear where they're going to go or how successful they're going to be. There's been reporting saying that
40:15 Israel still wants to strike Iran soon, but that Trump supposedly wants to see how the talks will go first. And one thing that happened that I noted is the very day of the Mars Pluto opposition on April 26th, there was this huge explosion suddenly in the Iranian port city of Bander Abbas and um it was a major port city and there was a number of people that were killed or injured and there's videos of just this huge explosion and shock wave and it was very mysterious having that happen exactly on the Mars Pluto opposition. and we had been talking about how we were paying attention to Iran and that opposition as being the next thing. So, you know, that's um curious in terms of
41:01 like was that an accident? Was it some sort of deliberate espionage or or or attack or something like that or or what? Yeah. And it was um looks like the death toll is I think around 70 right now, but um like a thousand people got injured. Like it was a it was a huge explo. It wasn't um it wasn't just you know one little building um had a fire and then it got put out and um it's also um being reported under the AP news that um it has been purportedly linked to a shipment of um ingredients used to make missile propellant which would suggest that um it is not a random explosion but nothing as as far as I know has been
41:48 confirmed but it is uh pretty suspicious. uh suspicious timing. Yeah, it is suspicious. So in terms of Iran and the US, our next target dates I feel like to look at are the Saturn ingress into Aries in late May because we've established that Aries seems to be especially important um for Iran and secondarily also for Israel because of the Libra stellium and just the Aries Libra eclipses over the past 2 or 3 years seem like they keep activating that relationship between Iran and Israel. And then especially the next set of eclipses in September is also one of my next targets to really pay attention to because um you know even though it
42:33 was the Aries Libra eclipse series that seemed like it coincided of of so much of the stuff that's been happening in the Middle East over the past few years. Um the recently as things have started to shift to Virgo Pisces, we've still seen some continuation of and some new threads opening up. So um we're really going to have to pay attention and see if that next set of eclipses represents another important turning point in terms of Iran as well or if if something was somehow completed under that last Aries eclipse. Yeah, that's a great point about the eclipses. I would also add to um points in the calendar to check in with Iran and uh relationships um the
43:20 Mars Saturn opposition in the during the first half um and in the middle of August um because that Saturn ingress as you said is meaningful because it's Saturn ingressing into Aries and then Mars's ingress into Libra and I think the 7th of August opposes is that and also ties in with the recently ingressed Uranus and Gemini and Pluto and Aquarius and should um be pretty lively. Yeah, that's a good call. That Mars Saturn opposition does look tough this summer. Yeah. Um All right. in other Mars like gruesome Mars Pluto opposition news in terms of there's just a series of things that happened sometimes on the same day but on the same day of the
44:06 opposition there was this like terrorist attack where some guy drove a car through a crowd of people in Vancouver that were at a a festival that was taking place and killed and injured like a bunch of people and this was on the exact day of the Mars Pluto opposition on the 26th and what was so striking about it from an astrological perspective, aside from just it happening on the Mars Pluto opposition, which already back last fall, I had gone back and done historical research and identified that that had been associated with um terrorist attacks in the past, but we had seen the exact same thing happen just months earlier on New Year's Eve, which was the the last time that Mars opposed Pluto. Exactly. that night
44:55 um there was a similar terrorist attack where this guy drove a car through a crowd of people in New Orleans and killed and injured a bunch of people. So, um as astrologers, all of us immediately like realized and recognized when this attack happened on the day of the Mars Pluto opposition that we had just seen an exact it was an exact repetition in some ways of something that happened on New Year's Eve at the last opposition. Yeah. Yeah. Um just beat forbeat repetition, same configuration, not only a terrorist act, but uh using the same instrument like driving a car. And then um in that same band of time, so the day after the pope died, um there was uh
45:42 there was a brutal terrorist attack in uh Kashmir um where gunmen opened up on tourists and 26 people were killed and 17 wounded. Um and this is part of there's a history of dispute in that region, but this was the worst assault in uh many years uh targeting citizens. Yeah. And that's now possibly escalating. I saw in the news today there's been continued escalations of that now between reigniting tensions between like uh India and Pakistan. Yeah. They've been uh like withdrawing um ambassadors and representatives and like they've been um untying um relations um friendly relations and or
46:29 neutral relationships. Got it. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, all I realize that's all very negative and gruesome, but unfortunately we had a a pretty negative planetary alignment last month. So we've been holding our breaths to see what would happen. And those are some of the things that happened. And you know, it's important that we document these things because that gives us then some ability to anticipate what some of those energies might be in the future when they come up for better or worse. Um, in other news, I have two slightly more positive stories in a different vein based on other things. One of them was around the Venus Direct Station. Um on April 14th, um Katy Perry, the singer Katy Perry and
47:17 a group of of women went into space in an all-woman crew on a Blue Origin rocket um where it shot into space. And this is apparently the first all female crew to be launched into space since 1963. Um, and I thought it was really interesting because when they got back, um, it wasn't really wellreceived. Like it was it seemed like it was very roundly like criticized on social media for being like a waste of money, for being like out of touch, for um, all sorts of things. And I ended up thinking that was interesting and and funny because, you know, I'd been trying to delineate that um configuration of Venus retrograding and stationing direct in Pisces, the sign of its exaltation where
48:05 the planet is like raised up to its highest, but it was also conjunct Saturn. So, if you listen back to like the forecast or like the year ahead forecast, you'll hear me like continually trying to delineate it as like a woman who's like raised up in status but who runs into difficulties that have to do with like health or age or criticism or different things like that. And actually, I have the transcript from the year ahead forecast. I said um this is just one of them that I said the Venus station's retrograde conjunct Saturn and I said quote and that some of the energy that would be interesting to attempt to describe which is some sort of metaphor of a woman who is exalted in status or at the highest point in society like a queen or a
48:50 celebrity or somebody that's a noble and rich and powerful socially but still has the burden of responsibility of age or of something satnian. that's kind of either putting a blemish on things or holding things back from being their most glamorous, let's say. So, end quote. So, that was my that was my attempt to delineate the like symbolism back then. And so, when that happened and then they came back from space, literally like a group of women going as high into the atmosphere as you can possibly go and then coming back, but then being roundly like criticized or even mocked for it. Um I just thought that was such a perfect manifestation of of those placements and those alignments. Yeah. Well, especially because um the
49:35 Venus direct station was um right next to the single degree of utmost exaltation for Venus, right? And so um you have the the symbolism is to be basically at to be raised up as high as anyone can be, right? Um but still to be subject to um Saturn, right, to get uh to end up getting, you know, to be raised up as high as anyone literally has ever been to be up above it all and then to get dunked on, right? Um so I guess it's two deg Saturn was in degree Saturn was in Venus's degree of exaltation there. um because it's the 26 27 um and so and Venus was trying to
50:23 return uh to the degree of utmost exaltation um only to yeah get dunked on by the internet. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. I was very nervous like leading up to it cuz Kate Perry Katy Perry was born like a week before me. So she's like almost like a time twin and I was just like please Katy Perry like don't blow up on this rocket because if something happened like then I would be become like very nervous that that I was I was next. I mean maybe uh if if it's an omen of anything maybe we'll get dunked on for uh for for this this podcast. Although we didn't record it back then so that's that's something. No. Well, something that did happen actually shortly after that is there was this day when Venus and Saturn and the moon all
51:08 conjoined at Venus's exaltation degree at 27 Pisces. And I'd been working on the Mesopotamian material recently, and I think I figured out the exaltations finally. Um, and I told you about that, but I was just struck struck by the fact that it happened when Venus was exactly at the degree of her exaltation. And um, yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about that and presenting what I think I figured out here sometime soon. Uh, yeah. I think you figured it out or you figured out a super important piece. It's great. Yeah. All right. So, one last piece of news perhaps. Actually, no. One last thing about the spaceship thing before we move on is I went back and looked because um and it turns out the first woman in space was
51:54 born under the same Venus retrograde in Aries. So, I thought that was an amazing repetition and like call back with this, you know, group of of women that were launched into space under this Venus retrograde right after it stationed direct is that that was tied back into earlier history. Um, including I think the first person in space was launched under this Venus retrograde in Aries as well. Right. This one has such a a firm historical connection to big firsts. Yeah, it's like big first, but also travel, both air travel and space travel. And I think that's part of the reason we were seeing some of the air crashes earlier this year, but it's also why there ended up being this major space story, not just now, but also historically. And I'm pretty sure it's
52:41 because of Venus being in Aries, which is the furthest from its sign in Libra. So there's a a notion of like being away from home and traveling also by extension. It's something I talk about in my Henistic book when I was trying to talk understand what the original conceptualization of detriment was. But um it's it's something I've come out of this retrograde understanding much better why I kept seeing traveling significations under this Venus retrograde in Aries. And I think it's because of that notion of detriment and being away from home. Yeah, that's Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah. and wandering, right? Wandering uh far from home. That makes sense. And that ties in with other things as well. Yeah.
53:26 Yeah. Good things to learn. All right. Moving on to possibly our most important, our biggest piece of um astrological news that happened this month for some people in astrological community is um like a week or two ago uh Beyonce published her birth certificate in a book and it contained her birth time and it showed that she was actually born with Aries rising. So this is a big deal especially amongst different astrologers in the community especially some of the younger Gen Z astrologers have been debating for years uh what uh Beyonce's rising sign is essentially and a lot of them were arguing for either like Scorpio rising or Libra rising and then all of a sudden it came out that she was Aries rising which because that was so different from
54:13 how some of the people had rectified there was actually initially some like skepticism or push back about whether that was True. But was what was funny from my perspective is that it immediately made sense because in the Venus retrograde in history episode that Nick and I recorded on January 10th, we had talked about how um this Venus retrograde in Aries had come up as being really important for Beyonce in the past. every time Venus goes retrograde in this sign, which wasn't otherwise a sign that she had planets in in her birth chart. Um, but all of a sudden realizing that this is her rising sign, we suddenly know why um why and it suddenly made sense. So, going back to like Destiny's Child and the single Survivor became a huge hit under this Venus retrograde back in 2001. Um, but
55:01 then under this retrograde, she finally won a Grammy for album of the year, which eight years ago, she had actually lost. And it had been widely perceived that she was kind of like snubbed for what arguably was her best album, which is like Lemonade eight years ago under that Venus retrograde. And so, it's interesting now under this one in Aries that she finally got album of the year and got that sort of recog recognition for the first time in her career. And it makes sense that it was happening in her rising sign. Yeah. So, here is for those watching the video version, the birth chart. Um, so the birth time is 9:47 p.m. in Houston on se September 4th, 1981. It gives 29 Aries rising. Um, so the Venus
55:49 retrograde would be in her first whole sign house, which again is good demonstration of whole sign houses because it's only in her first house, making it very prominent if that entire sign is like marked with the significations of the first house. But some of the interesting features of the chart is it gives Aries rising with Mars in Leo at one degree of Leo in the fifth house in a night chart. And one of the things that made me think about is that um she has Aries rising, Mars and Leo in the fifth house, and then this huge Libra stellium in the seventh house. And um there were these like stories in like the 2000s about how in order to psych herself up for these huge performances that she invented this like alternative personality called Sasha Fierce. And I
56:36 think that's a really funny like example of the thing that sometimes modern astrologers say about the rising sign about it being like the mask you wear as opposed to let's say some of your internal um feelings or dispositions or other things that are represented by other planets and just like the persona that one projects especially in this case with the ruler of the ascendant and the fifth for the purpose of creativity or performance to be something that might be a little contrasting with how she might feel internally with that like sun in Virgo or that stellium in in Libra. Yeah, absolutely. Um you also see with um the ruler of the ascendant conjoined um one of the nodes um you see um you see ma the masking or taking on
57:24 another persona intentionally um with the nodes a lot of the time. M okay. That's that's partially where the um clown delineations uh uh of the last two months came from for me is like you see like putting on like putting on a mask like a the a cl like clown face paint is obviously a mask. Um but you see that with people who um who take uh who take on a Yeah. in like a stage persona or a pseudonym etc etc. Yeah. Yeah. So, and it was interesting, of course, because Mars was in late cancer and then Mars moved into Leo shortly after this was released. And that provided a really interesting parallel with uh Duual Lia who we
58:11 remember her birth certificate in time was released a few years ago when Mercury was retrograde in Virgo, which was the sign of her ruler of the ascendant, which was Mercury and Virgo. and she actually discovered that the birth time that she thought she had for many years was wrong and then like discovered the actual birth time under that retrograde transit. So there was a weird parallel here with Beyonce having this ruler of the first house transit and then all of a sudden her true birth time becoming known or becoming unmasked in some way. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then finally um the Libra stellium falls in her seventh house including Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Pluto. And um that makes so
58:58 much sense just in terms of her relationship with her husband with Jay-Z who was you know a very famous um rapper and like media mogul before they even got together. And then they became like this huge power couple. But then so much of their their marriage and their ups and downs over the years has become the focus of uh both of their creative outputs at different points especially in the past decade. Uh and it makes a lot of sense seeing that huge stellium there in her seventh house indicating that the sphere of marriage and partnership and relationships would be very important for her which we understand now is not just because it's in Libra but also because it's in the seventh sign house. Yeah. Yeah. but
59:43 crucial but also complicated with both Pluto and Saturn there. It's not easy but it's absolutely necessary with with so much of the chart there. Yeah. It's like all of the most positive as well as the most challenging planets are there. So it's like some of the greatest the most generic delineation you would give for this chart is that if you didn't know who the person was is that some of the greatest positive things as well as some of the greatest challenges will come in the sphere of relationships. Yeah. Yeah. You think of being part of a big group as well as um like um one-on-one marriage style partnership as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah. So that is Beyonce's chart and it's always cool when we get a chart. You know what's funny is this um
1:00:31 we were recording I just released a couple days a yesterday the um Venus retrograde in the news part two episode that I did with Lindsay Turner and Nick Diggan best and I got a text like in the middle of recording that episode from Camille Michelle Gray that like told me this birthtime had dropped because that was huge news in the astrological community and you can see our live reactions to this news um in the middle of that episode. So you can uh you can watch that for funny little like tidbit about astrologers like getting this news for the first time. That's great. All right, I think that's it for the news section. Um do you got anything else? Oh, I did want to mention that um the South Korean president who or former
1:01:17 South Korean president um who declared martial law right on the Mars retrograde station and then had it undeclared um was re was removed from office at the very end of Mars and Cancer. Um, and so that that story of the the person who declared martial law and had it undeclared is now removed from office and South Korea is scheduled to have another presidential election on June 3rd. But just, you know, it's part of that like wrapping up the Mars business, right? Yeah, absolutely. So that ties in really well with just something we've said which is that the Mars retrograde which we said before the Mars retrograde in Cancer in Leo but now has become more clear that it's rarely just a singular
1:02:03 event but usually it's like the unfolding of a sequence of events over an extended period of time and so that one that one is very very clear then yeah really easy like he did the thing it got undone immediately and then it was unclear as to what repercussions he would face and then as Mars was wrapping up in cancer the repercussions are clear. Moving on. Yeah, absolutely. Um okay, that's pretty good. Um there only there are two other positive stories I noticed. One um a new color scientists announced they they discovered or created a new color by like hijacking the eye somehow. And it's a color that you normally can't see with the human eye, but somehow they've created it. I thought this was a weird
1:02:50 manifestation of like Neptune going into Aries possibly. Um because there was a second color story in the news within days was talking about RFK saying he was going to move artificial dyes from food and I noticed the overlap of two stories about color like in the news at the same time and the Neptune ingress was was the only thing I could kind of like connect that with. Although, you know, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's like Venus in her exaltation in Pisces as well. Um there could be other factors involved. Yeah, I feel like feel like there I think the Neptune the Neptune ingress is likely and I feel like I have some precedent for that buried somewhere um in my hundreds of years of Neptune
1:03:36 and Aries notes, but I don't I don't have that handy. Well, that actually then makes me remind it does remind me of in the in the 1950s during the Saturn Neptune conjunction then um like color television started being rolled out or something like that. So we do have some pre precedent in terms of Neptune. Um and the only other thing is in April also scientists announced that they discovered organic life possibly on a distant uh planet that's in a solar system over a 100 light years away and they said that they can they detected gases in the atmosphere of that planet um visually which on Earth they only know that those can be created by algae like an Earth.
1:04:24 So, I had a hard time figuring out what exactly that was connected with. Like, it was the same day of the Mercury Neptune conjunction at 0 degrees of Aries, but um that could end up in the long term, if that's true, could end up becoming one of the most historically important things that happened this month. That would be wild. Yeah, we'll find out. All right, I think that's it for the news section. So, why don't we take a little break? All right, let's transition at this point to talking about the forecast for May and really getting in deep into some of the planetary alignments that are coming up this month. So, let's do some big picture stuff. Um, for me, the big picture stuff is that at the beginning of the month, we have Venus returning back to Aries and spending most of the month traveling through that sign,
1:05:11 wrapping up the tail end of the broader Venus retrograde period. Um, we unfortunately open the month still coming off of the Mars Pluto opposition which is still pretty close and tight and it gets reactivated by Pluto stationing retrograde in Aquarius early on the early in the month. Um there's this unexpectedly explosive configuration around the 17th and 18th with a sun Uranus conjunction and Mercury Mars conjunction which normally on their own wouldn't be anything huge to write home about but it's just weird that they happen on within 24 hours of each other. And then finally the big big thing is Aries Saturn entering Aries on the 24th marking a huge shift both um globally in terms of like mundane or
1:05:57 world astrology but also especially in people's personal lives because this is going to be the first time Saturn departs from one whole sign house in each of our charts and moves into another. So I think that's going to be a big deal and we luckily closed the month with a very auspicious looking Gemini Stellium that actually looks kind of nice and gives us something of a break compared to the past several months. Those are my impressions. What are you how what are you feeling about about May Austin? Do we get a Yeah, I I largely agree with all of that. Saturn and Aries is a huge deal. Saturn ingresses are a big deal in and of themselves and this one is an even bigger deal for a variety of reasons. Um I guess one of the one of the things
1:06:43 about May that's important to me is that we're basically done with the twomonth um like show. Like we're basic we're we're wrapping up the last part of the Venus retrograde. We're totally wrapped up with the Mercury retrograde. We're well out of the eclipse season now and we're finally basically out of the Mars retrograde uh cycle. So, little bit of Mars, little bit of Venus, um like the cleaning up like it's, you know, it's like it's like the um the circus cleaning up uh the the day the morning after the big show to like leave town. like there's still, you know, uh there's still some I don't know um grease paint and needles like in the
1:07:29 fairgrounds, but it's not it's not the big top show. Um, and so for that I am grateful. That makes me laugh because it makes me think of it's I I feel like um the analogy is like the movie theaters that are getting trashed recently, the minecraft theater and the like chicken jockey thing. And uh but we're at this stage still where you come in just afterwards and like all of the popcorn is like strewn about everywhere and there's still a lot of cleaning up to do because Venus still got has to pass through Aries and Mars still has to pass through Leo again. So it's like the aftermath of those planets grinding over those degrees is still there. Um but you know we're starting to to cut to move
1:08:15 away from it finally. Yeah. when we're sort of, you know, several of those cycles were sort of uh initiating us into or beginning an era or a period of time. And so we're we're now in this period of time, but it's not the um like the dramatic psychotic um surprising initiation period where everything is changing. It's sort of like, okay, it's kind of like this now, but we can start to adapt to it. Um, and so, you know, subjectively it's I like that like it's not a bunch of like there is, you know, Saturn moves into Aries and that's an important new thing, but it's all of this focus on early Aries and chaos in
1:09:00 early Aries um made me feel at several points over the last couple months like Saturn had already been in had already entered Aries. like there's a lot of uh a lot of that is already primed and I think people or people are already primed for a lot of that and I think
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