Mercury Retrograde Conjoins Mars in Sagittarius! Live Horoscopes + Q&A

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Sorry, guys, I'm a little bit late. Welcome in. I can see you guys. Guys are complaining in the comments. Where is he? I accidentally thought that we were at 10am this morning, and then I realized, oh my god, this is 9:30am so that's that's my bad. I'm sorry to keep you waiting here, but it's good to be here, and I'm really excited to come together and talk about Mercury and Mars Retrograde.

Mercury Retrograde getting together with Mars, a very potent combination that we're going to look at today. But as I'm just getting arriving here, I'd love to hear where you're coming from. As always, where are you tuning in from? Tell us about what country, what city you come from.

Let's see here. Cassie says, There he is. Good morning. I'm here. Okay, good morning for my it is a Mercury Retrograde kind of thing to happen. So let's see New York City from Cassie. Is it cold there? Right now? It's cold here, I guess in Minnesota, Detroit, Michigan, accord, New York. Sup from Nashville, no complaints, just psyched for the Nightlight. Wisdom drop good. No pressure.

Sarasota, Florida, Los Angeles, Central Illinois, Urbana, Birmingham, Arlington, the Peruvian Amazon. Excellent. I hope that you're be kind of cool if you were on Ayahuasca like right now. I'm just kidding, these live sessions are awesome, great addition to your programming. Hi from Toronto.

They always typically come at the end of the year. So if you've been on my channel for a while. It's around the end of the year, around Kickstarter time, I typically come live a lot more to say thank you and try to rally support for the Kickstarter, which begins Monday of next week. So I'll be telling you more about that today.

It's not too late to join our year one program. The new cohort starts this weekend. I'll be promoting that and we'll be taking a look at Mercury retrograde and Sagittarius conjoining Mars. That will be our goal for that. It's a major Mercury Retrograde situation here.

Let's go Tampa, Lithuania, Macedonia, gosh, really, from all over New York City. It's cold. Someone else mentioned from New York City that it's cold there, Melbourne, Florida, 50 there. Well, that's not too bad. I can't feel too bad for you. I guess for Florida, that's cold Pacific, but North, yeah, that does sound horrible.

Where I'm not on Ayahuasca at this moment, at this moment, but I'm sure the medicine, you know, if you spent time in Peru, I'm sure you've probably spent some quality time with the medicine, will you ever play guitar for us? Nope. That's just me. That's just my own private little interest. I'm a little too shy.

I did when I was in graduate school. I had a friend that played the gym Bay, and we were regulars at a coffee shop in the town that I went to graduate school in that was really fun. It's kind of a low key vibe that we we played music in maybe once or twice a month. So a little bit of experience playing for people, but not a lot, uh, Halifax, Nova, Scotia, Toronto, year one is awesome. It will change your life. It Yes, and I'm going to tell you more about that, because you got a few days left. You can still join from Amsterdam. Oh, hello, indeed. Love. From the plants. Hi from Italy.

It's 38 degrees in New York City. Okay, I don't feel now. I thought you were saying it was cold. Yeah, guys need to. Guys need to check out Minnesota. I 38 degrees, I guess. You know, I got pretty cold at times when I lived in New York City for a while. I think you can get colder than that, right? But, uh, yeah, no, it's in the it's in the mid 40s here today. So not too bad.

But anyway, Adam, your honesty with everything is such a breath of fresh air. Always, from hating on horoscopes to a simple note to playing guitar and all the kids. Yeah, no, you know I'm saving you. It's not, it's, it's, it's more than honesty, it's social welfare. Okay? Hello from Alberta, zero degrees in West Virginia this morning. Wow, that's intense. I. Toronto is cold right now.

I was in Toronto for the first time a couple years ago. We got asked by an astrology group in Toronto to come out, and we did a weekend series of talks. My wife and I lovely like just I didn't I had no idea Toronto was so nice. I enjoyed that city. Colder in Minnesota than Alabama right now, isn't that? Wouldn't that be kind of normal? Though? I don't maybe I don't understand that one.

I really loved the story about your daughter and the apartment song. My kids are into that song too. Yeah, they all are. They're all little psychos. I'm just kidding. Oh, okay. I really want to study with you. However, the timing is off again this season, so on, but not soon enough.

Ah, you know what I will tell you, though, just as a little gentle push back, the timing is never right. It when it comes to, like, taking on a course that you're like, Oh, I really want to take that on. And I know it's like a big one year program. It's at some point it, what I've experienced doing this a long time is that at some point people who people may feel like it's never quite the right time, and at some point you just have to dive in.

You just have to go, I'm going to study, I'm going to make it happen. And even if it takes a while, or you move at your own pace, like a lot of people never start because they never feel like it's quite the right time, anyway, whatever. When it's the right time, it'll be the right time, that's for sure.

I miss your incredible sense of humor. Hey, what's happening with the US energy right now is that? Is that nice? I don't know if that's a nice comment. I don't know if you're be I don't know if Does that mean I'm not funny anymore and you miss it, or does that mean you haven't been around for a while? Let's hope it's the latter. I'm just I'm mostly playing.

Okay, let's see here. First year course, is changing my life, and I'm going slowly, yeah, I think, I think that's the way to do it, for sure. Well, anyway, welcome in everyone. It's good to be here. I'm really glad to tell you about just how awful this Mercury Retrograde is going to be, how you're all screwed with the conjunction of Mars that's coming, and what you have to be really afraid of between now and then.

No, I'm teasing. I'm gonna try to tell you about this Mercury Retrograde in a way that's honest, but hopefully encouraging, and one that will give you some things to watch for, specifically with your horoscopes. But also, you know, we're not gonna blow smoke up your ass. There's some really difficult features about this retrograde that I think you know, forewarned is forearmed.

There's there's some things we can do to be prepared, psychically, mentally, emotionally. So hopefully we'll get at some of that today, and then we'll also give you some really practical takeaways with the horoscopes. Okay, so i Hmm, Adam. Do you flirt with any other astrology technique that may not necessarily come from Hellenistic astrology? Do I flirt with that's funny.

There are lots of techniques. I was modern astrologer. Practiced evolutionary astrology for years prior to coming to Hellenistic. So there's lots of get to know me, and you'll find out I have all sorts of all sorts of techniques I flirt with.

Okay, anyway, let's get on with our Mercury Retrograde coverage. I'm going to start by telling you today, before we begin that you still have a little bit of time left to join our first year program. I'm going to tell you about that to start. I'll come back to it again later.

I'm going to take you over to Nightlight astrology.com if you go over to the website, go to Nightlight astrology.com click on courses. The first year course, we begin this weekend. So you are starting on the 15th, that is Saturday. We meet from 11am Central time to typically 1pm Central Time, which is 12 to two Eastern on Saturdays, everything is recorded, if you can't make it live.

This is a one year course in Hellenistic astrology. We go down to the ancient, philosophical and tech technical roots. You're gonna learn about the techniques the earliest astrologers, which compared to modern forms that are comparatively like psychological are very predictive. So having that predictive toolkit, and an understanding of the classical roots, philosophically and in terms of actual techniques you can use, is tremendously empowering for your journey as an astrologer, whether you want to practice professionally or this is just something for you, either way, so beneficial to get down into the historic. Roots and to learn more about the science of fate and karma.

But also, this program is called Ancient astrology for the modern mystic, because we don't want to lose any of that psychological sophistication and sensitivity that modern astrology has really given us, so we're this program is ultimately about building a bridge from ancient astrology to modern astrology, that if you've never studied ancient astrology, you have to, at some point, you just have to do it, because it will blow your mind and it will transform you.

It's a very healing and transformative program. Most people who come through our programs experience some pretty significant personal transformation during the program because of how substantive the spiritual roots of the tradition are. When you're learning about it, it's really pretty, heart opening and mind blowing. So anyway, check it out.

Everything you need to know is on the page, including a video about the course. At the bottom, you'll find the early bird sale is over, but there is still need based tuition. So if you're someone who'd really like to take the program, but you still need a flexible price price point, because you have maybe some hardship financially, or you're you have to work within a fixed budget or limited income.

We understand that take advantage of the need based tuition. You can use that all the way through the start of the program this week. It'd be great if you didn't register at the very last minute. So if you can register today or tomorrow, give us a little time to get you in to the system so that you can attend that first class on time, all of that good stuff.

So use the need based tuition today, apply. Hope to see you guys in class soon. And then the next thing I'm going to talk about, I will come back to after we do horoscopes, which is the launching of our Kickstarter campaign, which is next Monday. I'll tell you a little bit more about that later.

Okay, so on that note, I'm going to put up the real time clock, and we're going to take a look at what's happening today.

So oh, the big arrows, big circles out. Here we go. Okay, so there's Mercury at six degrees of Sagittarius having just turned retrograde, about to conjoin Mars. That's what we're going to be focusing on today. But before we do that, let's animate this chart and give you a feel for the entirety of the cycle.

The cycle began as Mercury reached the sixth degree of Sagittarius last weekend, and stationed that stationing into the retrograde happened on Sunday into yesterday, so depending on exactly everyone measures the exact moment of a retrograde, slightly different ways, but the station into the retrograde was happening over the weekend into yesterday, that retrogradation will now take mercury into A conjunction with Mars almost immediately, as Mercury is basically picking up steam in its retrogradation, and that's a big deal, because anything happening right around the station to retrograde point or the station to direct point tends to get amplified in its meaning and importance symbolically.

So the fact that mercury is barely moving, turning retrograde, and as it does so, immediately, catching a conjunction to Mars, that's rough, but there's a lot of things that we can look forward to in this and a lot of why this retrograde can again. There's a kind of silver lining, even though the retrograde stationing with a malefic is the fact that this these two planets are meeting in the bound and domicile of Jupiter and Jupiter in the sky is exalted right now, catching a Trine from the sun. Jupiter is about to turn retrograde. So that little detail is also super important. Very interesting.

We'll talk more about that in a minute, but let's finish talking about the cycle first. So that retrograde cycle connecting with Mars is happening today, tomorrow and Thursday. That would be the 11th, 12th and 13th of November, where you're really going to notice the connection between Mercury and Mars. So I love that. This is it's such a potent symbol.

And one of the things that I love about moments like this, even if they involve difficulty, is that if you're a student of astrology, the symbolism becomes so vivid that it's like it's the equivalent of taking like a master class from a great astrologer on a combination of planetary symbols. If you just pay attention right now, you're going to get a really profound set of insights around Mercury Mars conjunctions, or mercury Mars Retrograde conjunctions, or such a conjunction ruled by an exalted Jupiter turning retrograde.

That level of nuance and sophistication is present all of the time, but we often as students of astrology. Are developing our ability to see those connections. The more sophisticated the layers or levels of connections between dignities, aspects, etc, the harder it is for us to see in the early stages of our development. As an astrologer, that the benefit of such a moment is that some of these connections become so bright and vivid when a planet's barely moving and making the conjunction, etc, that it's like, wow. Now I'm going to become aware of layers of connection that might I might not be ready to see otherwise, because I'm just not that advanced. I love that, even for me as someone who's been doing this 16 years, I guarantee you I'll get new insights about the planets present in the sky, the combinations present that I've never had before, because this is a pretty rare, vivid moment for these connections to be made. So keep that in mind, all of that can be the standpoint that we take as students, or, you know, enthusiasts of astrology, that also gives us a little bit of a buffer, because where you're appreciating capacity can stand in and participate, sort of shoulder to shoulder with the part of you that's just receiving and going through it all the better, right? If you have some part of you that can be like, Wow, that's freaking beautiful. As a student of astrology, it's astrology, wow, it's astrology. Good. That really helps. That's what we're here for. So anyway, the conjunction then starts separating. We get the three degrees of engagement and separation by the weekend. So heading into this weekend, Saturday, about Friday into Saturday, the 14th and the 15th, Mercury and Mars pull apart. And so that feeling like they're just energizing each other and, you know, kind of glued together that starts dimming or diminishing in its in its importance by the weekend, then Mercury's next major moment will be next week. It Retrogrades into Scorpio by about the early to middle part of next week. I think it's probably the 18th Tuesday into the 19th that that occurs. Yep. And then we have arguably, in my book, and we'll be talking about this on the channel next week, at length, but we have probably the biggest new moon of the year. The reason for that is, check this out. So Mercury's retrograde takes it into the heart of the Sun, which is a cazimi that's the reset of its Synodic Cycle as it flips over to start becoming the morning star. Direct motion cazimi is also a big deal, but the retrograde cazimi is often about one phase of mercury dying and another being born, and it's marked by this very powerful moment of solar infusion of light. It's the message, and the messenger, the message being the sun, the messenger being mercury. When they come together, there's a very powerful moment where we sometimes get messages or insights or clarity, or we're empowered to do or say something, or a relationship with authority figures can become really interesting, or our own internal authority, well, that mercury cazimi is happening at the exact time of a New Moon in Scorpio. That New Moon is anaretic, meaning it's in the final degree, or couple of degrees, which are the bounds of the malefics and all of the signs. So it has a culminating effect in the things happening at late degrees of signs are often about the bringing of things to completion or closure, and there's sometimes a feeling of things falling apart. So all of that, excuse me, I've got something in my throat. So all of that makes this mercury cazimi very potent. But then we place it at the time of a new moon, it tones the entirety of the next lunar cycle, not only that, but then we place all of it into a very tight opposition with an anaretic Uranus, who's finishing its final comments in the sign of Taurus. This is, I think, the most powerful new moon of 2025 doesn't come till basically the very end, but I think it's the big grand finale of the year, from the standpoint of the Lunation Cycles. Huge, just huge. So this Mercury Retrograde is quite potent in that it starts with the Mars it leads to this very powerful new moon, cazimi opposite Uranus moment. And then from there, it doesn't get any less dramatic, this mercury retrograde cycle is just really loud. If we take it a few days forward to November 22 well, then look. We got Mercury's retrograde activating the Grand Water Trine. There's the Grand Water Trine again. Now Mercury Retrograde, for the second time, is reactivating it, which means there's emotional, mental, emotional depth that we're returning to in the midst of this mercury retrograde cycle that is quite pronounced. Then we go forward just a little bit, Mercury and Venus will get together in Scorpio. As Venus now becomes the activator of the Grand Water Trine. This is late November right now. Isn't the 24th or 25th of November here that we're mapping out. And from that point, if we continue forward just a little bit, Mercury will then station. This is around November 29 heading into December, Mercury's station direct occurs. And then Mercury is going to go forward one final time, activating the Grand Water Trine along the way. By early December, this is like around December 7, and then mercury, at the very end of that process, will oppose Uranus one more time by about December 10. At that time, we're now coming into the waning half of the moon cycle. So as you can see, Mercury's retrograde, and it's cazimi, it's opposition to Uranus, it's activation of the Grand Water Trine. This Mercury retrograde cycle is not fucking around. It's super, super loud. It's just so potent. So that's why, again, at the beginning of the year, when I was looking at all of my Mercury Retrograde cycles and Lunation Cycles, this one really stood out to me, the Grand Water Trine, I think is sneaky, big part of 2025 I'm been surprised. I've heard some astrologers recently here or there, that, you know, that have come through, like the social media streams, Instagram or whatever, saying things like, boy, I really thought that the last part of the year was going to be calm, after all the outer planetary ingresses. And I was sort of surprised by that, because I, when I was looking at this, I was, I couldn't have imagined that a Grand Water Trine being replayed like five times in, you know, a couple of months is going to be quiet. But all of that is just to say also that

life doesn't stop lifeing. You know what I mean? Like people who are looking for there to be a time when the astrology is not dramatic are sort of looking in the wrong place. If you don't want life to be dramatic, you know you have to change your lifestyle, you have to change your mind, you have to change your consciousness, and you probably have to change your relationship with astrology for it not to be constantly, for astrology to not be constantly presenting you with the feeling that life is overwhelming and just full of constantly dramatic events. You have to change your relationship to life and astrology itself, and then you start seeing things a little bit differently. For example, in India, the practitioners of Jyotish, they don't get super attached to their birth charts. In fact, in your training in that tradition, you're really seeing it as an as a device that's being used to help people recognize and work through their karma, but constantly being engaged in your own chart all the time, not the language of astrology, but constantly being obsessed with your own chart would be to be obsessed and entangled in a problematic way with your own karma at Nightlight, one of the things we emphasize is not that you shouldn't look at your chart, but that you should develop a more sensitive and intentional relationship with why you're looking at your chart and when you're looking at your chart, and that your consumption of astrology should be for the sake of actively being able to see and engage With the divine intelligence behind the ordering of events so that you can trust and find more peace and flow and alignment as you walk the path of life. And if astrology is constantly making you feel like, when is it ever going to end? That's on you. It's on you for not having the right relationship with astrology, which I get it's hard to do when the only way we're hearing about astrology is constant sensationalism and drama. So when we enter a moment like this, where the astrology is rather dramatic, and I do think it is, the point on my side of the way that I look at it is not so much to get wrapped up in the drama, but to be thoughtful about it, so that we can walk through it like it's a prayer that's that's that's what Nightlight is about. That's what this channel is about, that's, that's what, that's my relationship with astrology, and the way I try to convey it anyhow. So I say that also so that we can recognize, even though I just presented a pretty epic looking cycle ahead the life's always epic. You know, when is it not? You know, you know what I mean, every era that's ever lived and practiced astrology has had people living in those times and spaces that have thought there's the end of the world is upon us. We're entering a dark age, or we're about to take the next great leap in consciousness. People have never not said that stuff, you know. So when it comes to some like perfectly objective understanding of where we're at in history and just how dark it is or just how light it is it's above my pay grade. All I know is that life doesn't stop lifeing, you know, and I've just got to do my best to be conscious, loving and, you know, doing the work of becoming my best self while trying to also take joy. Way in the privilege that it is to be here and beyond that, I leave it to the angels who have things in their knowledge that, again, is just like above my pay grade. So all right, well, that's a preamble. Let's get into some of this very specific Mercury Retrograde with Mars, conjunction that we're going to now focus on. So when we like whoops, let me get back to here we go. When we take a look at this mercury station to turn retrograde and we notice, okay, look, it's in a conjunction with Mars. What does that mean for us? What can we take away from that? Let's start with that piece, and then we're going to add in the rulership of Jupiter. First of all, broadly speaking, what? What does a Mercury Retrograde signify? There's a lot of confusion, I think, that exists, about what Mercury's retrograde signifies. First of all, Mercury's retrograde is just one turning point within an entire Synodic Cycle with the sun. And Mercury's retrograde is only meaningful to the extent that we understand the entire Synodic Cycle of mercury and its symbolism, because the retrograde is a stage in a process. You know, if you were to, I don't know, like, let's say you're describing a roller coaster ride at Disney World or something, and you're like, oh, there's this one part where you go through a loop de loop and go upside down, right and but I mean, how, how effective would it be if you didn't describe all the other parts of the ride that the loop de loop was a part of you, you would and then You treated it as if the loop, de loop was the ride. That's what's happening when we constantly talk about Mercury Retrogrades in a vacuum without understanding the rest of its Synodic Cycle. That truly is what's happening. People don't see that, but that's all because of the culture of sensationalism around astrology. We think Mercury Retrograde that means something, well, in a vacuum, no, right? It's a part of a cycle. So what is the retrograde within the cycle? That's the question. There are two phases that Mercury goes through. Broadly speaking, it's evening star phase and it's morning star phase. And those two phases were thought of the nocturnal or evening star phase, and the evening realm itself is more feminine. And what is mercury? When it's feminine, Mercury is the Lord of opposites, and the interaction of opposites has two different kinds of functions in ancient Pythagorean philosophy that informed the earliest astrologers, opposites work in two basic, different ways that are themselves opposite to each other. If that sounds a little funny, think about the yin and yang. The yin and yang circle has a black portion and a white portion. And so you can look at it just visibly, and you can go, oh, black and white are opposite. Yes. So there's a way in which Black is not white and white is not black, and they're sort of like oppositionally. They're like opposed to one another, and that's one way that opposites work. And you can just see it visually in the Yin Yang symbol. However, if you look, there's also a little speck of white in the dark and dark in the white. And so we also know by contemplation upon that image that there's a way in which these things aren't just opposites that are hard and not the other. But there's also a way in which they move on a spectrum in and out of each other, like a dimmer switch. It's relatively more dark or light, dark and light are sort of swimming together on a spectrum that would be the black and the white and the white and the black. It's like a dimmer switch. And that way of working with opposites is one way, just like it's either light in this room or it's pitch black in this room, or another way that opposites work. So when Mercury is in its Evening Star phase, broadly speaking, when Mercury, excuse me, when Mercury is in its Evening Star phase, one of the ways that mercury can broadly be described is feminine, which means that it's play of opposites. The way that it works with opposites in our lives, much of which we end up recognizing mentally or like cognitively and intellectually, is through a fluid spectrum movements. It's the feminine phase of mercury, and in that phase, there's, broadly speaking, a lot of different things that can happen, because mercury is going to go through a lot of signs, and it's going to be moving through your birth chart. If you track the developments of mercury, there's so many specific things that will happen. But broadly speaking, mercury in the evening star phase is more feminine, which means more fluid, which means things are moving in spectrums. And then one of the things that happens when it moves to the Morning Star phase is things start taking on more of the quality of oppositional tension, which means it's more black or white, it's more binary. And those two Mercury's, that's one of the most distinct ways of breaking mercury. Mercury into the two parts of its cycle. Well, what starts happening when Mercury reaches its station point to turn retrograde in the evening star phase

is the things that have been fluid are going to start gradually concretizing, crystallizing and different kinds of mental, ideological, intellectual, communicative, distinctions and contrasts are going to start growing stronger, and that's going to happen as different kinds of relationships start being broken down into concrete opposites. You can track this out. It's a very subtle and not so easy thing to follow compared to say, like, what house is mercury in and what topics is mercury activating? Like much easier to follow, but if you subtly track out the things that start to for example, a very common occurrence around a Mercury station, because it'll always station to turn retrograde in its Evening Star phase will be that at the station to turn retrograde, disagreement will occur. Disagreement will be the way of the more masculine Mercury starting to present itself. Where there's less diplomacy, there's less fluidity, and you're going to start seeing more like stark contrast appearing. And one of the ways that that manifests is a breakdown in communication, and some, you know, contrasting like opposite or more binary positions being taken relative to a topic that's very, very common during a Mercury Retrograde, or a station to turn retrograde where there has have been agreements, social bonds, social contracts, various phases or stages of relationality, some of those Things start breaking down as Mercury goes through its retrogradation, and then as it hits the cazimi and starts coming out on the other side of the Sun, Mercury takes on a much more masculine quality, which will tend to draw lines in the sand and start exploring life through harder binary oppositions. Again, this is pretty philosophical, and it for a lot of people, tracking at that level is not going to be immediately intuitive, but over time, that's one. It's a really profound way of understanding the vacillations of mercury, because when Mercury then slows down to station and turn direct, starts moving forward in direct motion as the Morning Star, eventually it'll cross the cazimi again, and all of a sudden, hard distinction starts softening, and Mercury becomes more feminized, and the mind in our relationship start moving more fluidly. Again. It's really, really profound when you start really paying when you you know again, you pay close attention to it. But the point of sharing this with everyone is not so much that you ought to all go out and now track how flexible or concrete your mind is, because that's like kind of an intangible thing to track, but rather to just start thinking about Mercury's retrograde as just one part of a cycle that's Always moving back and forth between masculine and feminine stages, the Morning Star, the Evening Star, back and forth. In fact, one of the ways that Mercury's one of the ways that mercury will be distinguished as more masculine or feminine in a birth chart. Do you have mercury playing for the more feminine side of things, or the more masculine side, which is a calculation that ancient astrologers performed, will be according to whether it was an evening star or a morning star. So yeah, so like, let me give you a simple example. If you have a Mercury Retrograde in your eighth house, you will often find that where things have been shared, or there's been more like fluid exchanges of assets between people, a common topic for the eighth house, that there will be the breaking of contracts or disagreements within contractual dynamics will start to occur, and that will start to occur as like, harder contrast between what one party wants or needs, and another needs will start to manifest. That's a very common occurrence for Mercury Retrograde in the eighth house where you're marrying the transition of mercury from feminine to more masculine in a house that's about exchanges with other people. So if it's time to revise contracts because there's new positions that need to be accounted for. And there's some hard negotiations that take place, but eventually you rework that bond that could also be a Mercury Retrograde, but in either case, you see the fluid feminine Mercury starting to transform into a mercury that wants to draw things apart more make more distinctions between things. So okay, all of that is great. Now let's look at Mercury and Mars. So when Mercury is stationing to turn retrograde, and we know that things are going to become more concrete, and where things are fluid, they're going to be more separated. And then we also see a conjunction with Mars, well, holy shit, because now we have a. A piece of evidence that augments or amplifies the tendency that mercury may have at such a point, archetypally, to split, to sever, to cut, to create harder divisions or oppositions, to create conflict. Now that's just one thing, because there's some really constructive things we can say about Mars as well. But that's why right now this is such a big retrograde because the retrograde may pronounce cutting or severing of bonds, because needs are starting to parse out where things have been more shared or fluid now, ideological differences, moral differences, differences of need, differences of interest, become more pronounced, and can be part of a decisive moment where people split, they cut. They say, Look, this is what I need, and it's a little different than what we've been doing. So unfortunately, I have to leave this dynamic that happened with one of our contract like, we have lots of contractors we work with who do different things for for us and, you know, and someone that we work with that there's no animosity between whatsoever, just told us I'm not going to be able to do the same amount of work because I've got something new coming up? Well, that retrograde. This is someone who helps my wife with some things that retrograde happened in her sixth house with Sagittarius in her chart. She's a cancer rising. Saj is the sixth house. Sixth house will include people you hire, people that you employ, contractors, workers, people that you pay money to do work for you will be found in the sixth house. So she hits the mercury, my wife hits the mercury. Retrograde moment with Mars, and someone she works with says, I have a new thing coming up. I'm not gonna be able to work as many hours for you. Oh, now I have to scramble and find someone else to fill some of those hours. You see how that works? Very similar. Now, let me tell you mine. I'm a tourist rising. This is happening in my eighth house, and I'm I quite literally, was looking for a better rate for home and car insurance. Such an eighth house topic, right? So I had a conversation. Could not find a meeting point with the kinds of rates that I want and I'm looking for, but I found it with another company. So I left my insurance provider and switched to a different insurance provider. It's like so simple, so eighth house and so Mercury Mars, where there's a split in terms of needs that can just break a contract or take you in a different direction. So it doesn't necessarily have to be like violent or aggressive. It doesn't have to be loaded with conflict, but feel the cutting and severing next to a moment where Mercury's retrograde is also tending to bring up more stark contrast as it heads toward its masculine phase, that the masculine has a way of being more binary in its thinking, the feminine more fluid. And so a less fluid mercury, a breakdown of mercurial fluidity, at the same time that it's conjoining Mars, can make some pretty sharp distinctions between things. I hope that makes sense to everybody, but that, again, that's why this is such a huge retrograde. Now the the other thing that I would bring up here is that these are, this is a Mercury Retrograde happening in a Jupiter ruled sign. Now that Jupiter can is exalted in cancer and also turning retrograde. So we're going to say more about that in just a second. But the jupiterian piece is important because Jupiter, broadly speaking, represents those institutions of meaning that give order and a sense of coherence to our lives. Ideally, like whatever criticisms we may have about democracy, we're like, it's not a democracy. It's a hoax. Okay, fine, that's I'm not necessarily. I don't want to, I don't want to spend time disagreeing or agreeing or trying to find consensus about politics, because that's not likely to happen, you know. But what we can all agree upon is that ideally,

a democracy is supposed to provide for equity and protection of rights and a fair justice system and the checks and balances of power and so on and so forth. On the ideal level a government is supposed to provide meaning coherence, goodness and order. That's Jupiter. Religion ideally is supposed to convey order, meaning ethics, ritual, connection to the divine, stepping from chaos into the felt sense that we live in a luminous, intelligent universe that's divine, good, beautiful, true, just that exists, but we often have to step into ritual and teachings and teachers and practices that keep us in the stream of that reality. So Jupiter is a planet of Praxis spiritually, where it says, Look, if you're not in prayer, in meditation, if you're not taking care of your body, of course, you're going to start feeling like the universe is chaotic. So Jupiter requires faith in action, but Jupiter is always providing us with like. Like the ideal institutions that create order and meaning, religion, education, government, all of those things. Now the fact that this Mercury Retrograde is happening in a Jupiter ruled sign suggests that the retrograde also has to do with a further refinement of beliefs or of institutions, paradigms or structures that give us that sense of meaning and purpose and coherence. So a retrograde in this sign any and that could happen in Pisces too, but in Sagittarius, the retrograde points to a time of refining, reflecting upon ideas and beliefs, but because it's becoming less fluid and more masculine, and conjoining with Mars conflicts, disagreements about ideology, morality, ethics, beliefs can become more pronounced that that's just a part of the deal. So to find yourself in a more hostile or tense conversation about what is good, right, true, what is the ideal direction a society should take right now, what ought you do in a situation that's ethically murky, disagreements or conflict about those things could become more pronounced, but also an ability to double down and go, You know what? I'm not walking my talk. What a profound opportunity right now, in fact, for us to go look, there's a way in which for my beliefs to not be a source of conflict, I have to carry them liberally and open mindedly in a weird way, ancient people, when they use the word liberal, were not describing a political party at all. They were describing a way of carrying any belief system that was adaptive, that was flexible. So you could be a very devout Catholic, but you move liberally through the world. With your Catholicism, it means that you don't constantly run into power struggles and conflicts within the way you carry your beliefs, because you carry them liberally, which means you're, you're, there's a sensitive, kind of open minded, flexible, adaptive way that you carry your beliefs more so than what the beliefs are themselves. So what's interesting is that a Mercury Retrograde in Sagittarius could be a time of saying, Look, you're, you've been great at being sort of liberal about the way you carry your beliefs in the world, might be time to get a little bit more serious and double down, because something about if the liberalness over too long a period of time will always contrast with conservatism. Conservatism and the conservativism plays a role too. It's really important that we know how to hold ourselves to certain conservative standards, not politically or ideologically in the way we now think of it. But conservation means that I'm conserving what I believe. And there are certain periods of time in life where we have to go through I'm I'm starting to, like, hold these things too loosely, and so I have to tighten them up. And so tightening up can be a Mercury Mars thing, where Mercury and Mars comes through and it says, Be strong. Be bold. Be convicted. Be stronger in practicing what you preach or in walking your talk, or like, Be who you say you are, dammit. You know it's like, get serious with your shit. And so this would be a great moment for that. This would be a great moment to say, again, Mercury's becoming more masculine in a faith based Jupiter and sign in a kind of ideologically driven sign like Sagittarius conjoining with Mars. Hey, look, it's time to be more courageous with the way you walk, your your talk, you've been maybe a little too liberal for the sake of flexibility, social adaptivity, great. You've been doing a great job. Now it's time to get a little bit more binary, not forever. But there are periods of time where we have to, like, tighten things up, and this could be a great moment for that. However, the reason that you have to tighten things up could come because something confronts you, because something pushes you, because something shows up and says, I think you're fake, or your ethics or morals have been too loose, or, Hey, look over time, if you're not adhering to your beliefs, you're going to run into An accumulation of the karma that comes from not being serious enough about what you're doing, and suddenly you're confronted with backsliding, or you're confronted with just missing the mark some way, and it's clear that you've missed the mark because you've loosened too much of your faith and your commitments. So great moment for that kind of like check, and the masculine is really good at providing that check, which then, if taken too far, will need the feminine to loosen it up again and become more adaptive, right? So it's a it's a dance always between these things, because what will happen is we'll get mercury retrograde, sliding back into the Mars ruled sign of Scorpio, the cazimi, the opposition to Uranus. So. The kinds of transitions of faith and meaning that mercury is asking from us right now, with this connection to Mars is has the potential to be truly revolutionary, a kind of gut check for our beliefs, our faith, and how we're walking our talk that can carry over through the entirety of a lunar cycle that hits the next new moon at a cazimi moment and again in Mars's sign so, and where will Mars be in Sagittarius, Jupiter ruled sign, so, looking seriously at our beliefs and whether or not our beliefs are, you know, like the great thing about Sagittarius, a double bodied sign that tends toward nihilism, destructiveness, like rabble rousing party crashing is like someone driving drunk on a Harley at its worst. Sagittarius, right? Love all my Sagittarius friends. My daughter's a SAG but you know, the the double story of Sagittarius in the solar year that's being told from darkness back to light by the end is about redemption. I get lost and then I get found. That's such a part of the moral fabric of Sagittarius, this is an interesting retrograde from the standpoint of like, are you getting lost? If so, how do you get found again? And there may be a quite a process playing out right now, where, if we can really look at ourselves and go like, where am I off track? Where have I completely like, too much slack, I got to tighten the reins again. We do that work. The cycle can provide us with it's amazing how, in my mind, you know, when you're when you feel like you've loosened up, you've lost the plot. It's amazing to me at that time, how lost and screwed we can sometimes feel, and yet, even the smallest amount of like, I'm going to try to pick myself up and get back on track, I feel like the universe's benevolent, graceful spirit will take even an ounce of effort in the right direction and just throw us back up on the horse, like it really, like there's so much support for us if we show even the smallest Oh, God, this is hard. I don't know if I can do this. I'm I'm a little weak, or it takes so much work, and gosh, it's tempting to just feel really bad about myself, or to feel like I can't do it, or to start making excuses for myself. Sometimes we can hear the voice telling us you can do better. We can hear it like a voice of shame. And so the natural response to a voice of shame is to tell it to screw off. I'm good enough as I am. But sometimes the hard message is, no, you're not. You're always good enough as you are, which is exactly why you can do a little bit better right now, believe it, and do it. Give an ounce of effort. We'll throw you up on the horse. Don't worry, you've got this. I really, truly believe that this is a moment that could act like a pep talk, you know. So, all right, well, now let's talk about Jupiter turning retrograde, fueling this in the background, this mercury Mars conjunction at the outset of the retrograde is hosted by a very powerful, very benefic Jupiter in Cancer. To me, that means that the specific area of ideology, belief, faith, morality, meaning is found in the Jupiter ruled house. So in horoscopes today, I'm going to be drawing connections for all 12 signs between sag and cancer. Look at those two houses right now. They're in a version to one another, which means it may not be they don't see each other, or there can be some disconnects between those two areas because they don't have a traditional line of sight to one another in the Zodiac,

nonetheless, Jupiter, retrograding in that house will suggest that this shift of beliefs, or this process of revising, tightening, changing our moral or ethical compass somehow is taking place in relation to the whole sign house of cancer, its topics, and broadly speaking, things like emotional unity, Family Safety, nurturance, sweetness, ancestry, family, karma, all the Cancerian things. Where do we have a sense of emotional belonging and safety in life. Do we nurture ourselves and other people? Where's that maternal Goddess Energy asking for us to check ourselves or get a little bit more serious or, you know? Or if there's any kind of break or cut from other people, it would be informed right now by things that have some real Cancerian there's like an underlying Cancerian quality or emphasis, okay, so that's the preamble to our horoscopes. I hope that was useful. And. So we're now going to turn our attention to our horoscopes. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to eliminate everything from our perspective, except for whoops, for Mercury and Mars and Jupiter. And what I'm going to try to do is sort of paint a picture for all 12 signs with respect to the connection between these houses that we might be seeing right now. I'll mostly focus on the house of Sagittarius for your horoscope and the mercury Mars combination. But I'm also going to throw in just a few little nuggets of how you might think about the whole sign house of cancer, with Jupiter being the host of the retrograde. Okay, but on that note, before I do whatever, this is going to be like an hour of horoscopes, I'm going to go fill up my water so that I have something to help my throat. So give me just one Minute. I'll be right back. You

water, yeah, no, it looks good.

I Okay,

dark chocolate water, we're good. Okay, let's do it.

I went downstairs just now, and my wife has been in the she's got like a hobby of making sourdough bread, and it just came out of the oven. Oh, I just about ditched all of you to just stuff my face for an hour with sourdough, but I came back. Okay, let's do it. So we're starting with Aries going through Pisces. This is a Dharma house, the ninth house, which means that everything that happens in the ninth house is supposed to further our understanding about what is real, what is God, what is truth, what is the universe? What is divinity? Now you might be going to medical school in the ninth house. Might be studying engineering or law, but the big capital Dharma of this house is what is truth. So although the ninth house is a place of universities and higher learning, it's also a place of pilgrimage, and it is the house of the Guru, the sage. It was the joy of the Sun. This is the house of illuminating. What is real and what is true. So for Aries right now, there is a breakdown in your understanding of truth, a process of education, an emphasis on learning, an emphasis on teachers, institutions of learning, questions about law or legality, spiritual, philosophical changes of mind, maybe some sharp distinctions or disagreements arising around learning, faith, religion, philosophy, none of that would be surprising. How are you being asked to refine or change your mind and your understanding of something? How you walk your faith in life, could also be the subject of this retrograde for Aries, however, notice the host, Jupiter turning retrograde in the fourth house of home and family. I would spend some time thinking about how those questions of faith, learning, philosophy, belief, religion, whatever the case might be, are connected right now to the home space, to family, to upbringing, to ancestral or family karma, to your home or living environment in some way, or perhaps to a more interior or private side of yourself. The fourth house can be that part that's very secret, invisible and private that barely anyone else sees. Well, what's the disconnect between how you are walking your faith or your beliefs in the world and what you think or feel privately? There's the potential for explorations of hypocrisy here that could be very illuminating to be like, You know what? I'm actually a little different on the inside than I am in terms of how I express my beliefs and thoughts on the outside. Or maybe there needs to be greater alignment between the two, and there's an opportunity to do that. But either way, look at the inner and the outer when it comes to your beliefs and how they're embodied in your life. Look at processes of education, belief, learning, maybe travel and connections to topics like home and family, those are the areas that I would connect really vividly right now for Aries, folks, now you could listen to this for Aries, sun or rising, but that's where we're starting. All right, let's move along to Taurus. Now for Taurus, this is my, this is mine. I think this is so funny. I got to tell you guys a story. It's story time. So I got a Jeep Wrangler back in 2022 and I ordered it, or, you know, I placed it. What do you call it? A deposit on the vehicle when Mercury was retrograde, and just recently as Jupiter went over my son in the third house, I had this realization that our family really needs. The kids have friends we tote around, there's soccer practices, there's all sorts of things we need. A vehicle that's more family practical. That's hard for me, because I really like having a Jeep Wrangler, you know. But like my my wife's car is functional. Mine is not. We need, probably another car that's functional. So I started looking at more like family SUV size vehicles, more practical for the family, very Jupiter on my son in the third and I found myself putting a deposit, putting a deposit on an SUV. Well, Mercury is retrograde again. So what I think find so funny about that is the connection, for me, has to do with the vehicles, investments, loans, deposits on on things like vehicles, a very third, eighth house connection, by the way. What will the insurance be on this? What would the loan be per month, or the lease, or whatever we decide to do? And exploring all of that as this retrograde took place, and I realized that there was a retrograde three years ago that took place where the exact same process was occurring. So just one of those kind of, like, you can't make this stuff up, you know, retrograde moments. But for all Tauruses, let me get serious now, the eighth house is the focus. So the eighth house is about agreements with other people about ownership and possession and property. Another thing that I find really interesting is I'm republishing my original book, but in order to do that, I had to get a statement of release from contract from Penguin. Penguin was the publisher of my book, and I had to revise or review a legal document that released me from my contractual obligation to them, so they no longer have the rights to my book. It's now mine, but the termination of their property of my book and the reversion of the rights to me is taking place literally right now as Mercury conjoins Mars in the eighth house. That's a perfect. Perfect example, another example in my life, of a contract that was in place, that's being revised and released. Eighth house has to do with the give and take between ourselves and others we're obligated to each other, karmically, emotionally, energetically, financially, whether it's an insurance company or inheritance or a loan, or financial dynamics in a marriage or relationship, the give and take in the exchange is the subject of the eighth house retrograde, the potential for termination or severing of contracts, switching of providers, establishment of different kinds of negotiation, terms of contracts or negotiation all could come up right now, pretty strongly for Tauruses, it wouldn't be surprising to see that there's some third house emphasis. For example, the third house a place associated with vehicles, also a place associated with writing. So you know, both my vehicle term of contract changing, my book, term of contract changing, so you can see the connection, but also things like siblings, things like things that happen in your immediate or everyday environment, like driving your car around. The connection between changes in those relational dynamics, those sole contracts and something about the third house are connecting right now. So that's the place to look for you, if you're a Taurus, I could see how the third house may not be immediately intuitive, like for me, I had to sit with it before I realized, like, oh yeah, gosh, there's a car and there's a book that connect the third house, jupiter to the renegotiation of the contracts in the eighth. So some it may not you have to sit maybe for a little bit with the Jupiter in the third, but the mercury Mars in the eighth certainly says, Who will I continue to work with? Who will I separate from? What agreements are advantageous or beneficial, what are naturally separating also, the eighth house is a place of karmic penalties and debts. This is a great moment to be like I'm going to I do not want to stay indebted or obligated to a pattern or a person that is problematic for me. This is a great moment to double down on your morality, if your morality has been generating karmic penalties for you, which is an eighth house topic. The eighth house was the place of karmic debts and penalties. And so, you know, if Mercury Retrograde, conjoining with Mars gets you really clear, I could tighten my beliefs. I could tighten the way I'm doing something, because I've been starting to receive some adverse consequences based on my actions, because my beliefs haven't been, you know, I haven't been walking my talk. That can be an adjustment that the eighth house gives you right now, if you remain aware of it, however, it could also serve up some debts, fees, penalties and consequences. So you know, if that comes up right now, pay them off and be done with it. All right, let us move on to Gemini. All

right. So for Gemini, we're looking at this squarely in the relationship house with Jupiter in the financial house. That's interesting, because this, for Geminis, could quite literally bring up issues of money and marriage, money, or finances and relationships, what you have or what you provide within a relationship that the other person is dependent upon, or what you have or provide that you could be more generous with, perhaps the terms of a relationship and how they're related to things you own, possess or have. Watch for that connection. I think that's the most vivid, literal connection I could think of. But Mercury Mars in this house are also about maybe ideological, moral conflicts, conflicts of value that maybe stem from differences in your upbringing or your family backgrounds, Mercury and Mars. Conjoining in this house can also be about verbal or intellectual disagreements and places where you may need to tighten your beliefs in relation to your marriage or intimacy. For example, if you find that you're with someone who has a negative influence on you and you're letting them, you find that you're compromising your integrity, because this person you like, who has a lot of redeemable qualities also drinks too much or spends too much, or cusses too much, or like whatever it is that'd be me, everyone needs to get out of a relationship with me because I cuss too much. No, I'm kidding, but you get the idea, which is that if there needs to be some doubling down on what you stand for and who you are, that is going to have a direct impact on a relationship. You could see that coming up right now. You. The other thing here would be about, do we encourage and push each other in positive ways, or is it destructive the way we speak or communicate with one another? So and then again, tie in some of the themes around things like family and money values money family in relation to whatever's happening in that sphere of intimacy or interpersonal relationships. All right, we're getting to cancer, which means I discovered this amazing truth, you guys. It's gonna sound so stupid. I fucking hate horoscopes. I hate all of you.

So anyway, I um, there's so much more manageable to get through at my desk if I literally just pause and take a bite of dark chocolate. I know that must sound crazy. My wife suggested it. She was like, you know, when I'm at my desk and I'm having to do something tedious that it's not like as natural for me to do, I just take little bites of dark chocolate. She's like, try it. No way is it that simple? Could it possibly be? It is that simple. My friends, I actually it maybe it gives me, like, a, just a, I don't know, they think there's some caffeine. It might give me just like, a little boost somehow, too. And but for sure, my mood, if I have to get through horoscopes and I can just pause for a second to, like, nibble on one of these things while, I don't know, serving all of the faceless zombies I'm

just fucking with you guys, but, yeah, it helps. It just, it just gets me. It gets me through it. So if, if in doubt, like little dark chocolate, that's been a secret for me lately, although one of the things I do that you're not aware of is when I'm making the horoscopes and they're on video, I pause the video. I don't like. I'm eating it on live stream right now because I can't pause the live stream. But when I make the videos, I pause so you can't see me eat it, and then I eat it, and then I continue the horoscopes. If you have noticed even a little increase in the I don't know the substance of the horoscopes are like the quality. I swear to God, it's the dark chocolate. All right, nothing in them. They're not, I promise you, they're not laced with anything but dark chocolate. Okay, cancer. You ready? Let's go. So we're in the sixth house. First of all, I was telling you my wife's a cancer, rising employees, people that you hire. Oh, someone said to her, you know, just yesterday, I'm not gonna be able to work as many hours. So having to, it's like you could be firing someone. You could have someone quit. You could have a conflict legally, with someone that you hire, or someone that you work work for or that you employ. I mean, that would be pretty dramatic, but it could also be something really simple, like someone your work for is, like, I can't work as many hours. Your nanny is going to college, and you're going to have to find a new nanny. Or, you know, it can be pretty mundane in that way, but just having to rework or revise certain contracts or agreements with with respect to people that you employ, people that you hire. Now, that's very mundane. Let's get into the deeper work of the sixth house. It's an art to house that has to do with the the work, sweat, sacrifice, service, that is involved in being a material creature. This. I mean, you've ever heard of the Jane's from India? I think they're from India. Yeah, the Jane's like, won't step on an ant. They're like, we're not going to kill any living being whatsoever. And there are paths that many mystics eventually take, which is very sixth house in the sense that they're trying to walk through the material world with as little violence and sacrifice and death and destruction as possible. And that's a totally valid spiritual path. However, in Indian philosophy, the inevitability that if you want to survive, you're going to have to chop down a tree for wood, and burn that wood which is killing the living being. It's a tree they think of as a living being. You're going to walk on microscopic organisms and ants, even if you think you're a vegetarian and you're not eating a living being. Plants are living beings with souls. There's no way in this material world to exist except for through the act of death and destruction. And that is a very basic part of most Eastern philosophy. You can't avoid it. However, it's also usually placed like the Lion King, within the great circle of life, right? It's like for life to be life, there's death, and death gives to life, and life gives to death. In this great circle, the Earth will consume my body at some point, if I'm. Put in the ground, or my ashes are spread, or whatever. But we all have to live with the fact that the world is burning, that it's burning with desire, and that life is propelled by death, and death by life and so on. That means that there's a certain degree of work, effort, sacrifice, struggle, hardship, competition, violence that are just like part of building anything in the world and part of living in the material world, and whatever you want to do to try to reduce that you can, you know, whatever small footprint you try to leave behind as least destructive as possible. That's part of the spirit of service in the sixth house, part of why this house is connected to things like altruism and charity, but it's not because it's a house of altruism and charity, as much as it is that those things are responses to the inevitable suffering and destruction that is part of life. And how do you deal with that? How do you meet that? That's the philosophical question at the core of the sixth house. Now Mercury Mars in that house can therefore be about reflecting on your your moral spiritual compass with respect to the parts of life that aren't easy, conflict and competition with other people in the same industry or field you work in pretty hard to avoid, even if you want to be a loving person, pretty hard to Avoid, envy, resentment, jealousy, competition, conflict with other people. Still, right now would be a really good moment to reflect upon who you are and how are you going to show up in a world that includes those things so that Jupiter is in your first house. Pretty magnanimous, beautiful. Jupiter in your first house to say how, what can the goodness in me be or how can I cultivate or develop my goodness, my charity, my generosity, my love, my compassion, so that those are the qualities that I pull into these messy gladiator arenas of everyday life, where there's going to be a mom in The School who gives me the side eye because she knows that I'm an astrologer, and she doesn't think her kids are safe around me. Or, well, you know, it's like, that's just shit that we deal with. But you know, the Jupiter in the first house, connected to these planets in the six would be like, Yeah, well, how can you bring How can you cultivate your character and your soul and your goodness, buried Jupiter in the first house, so that you can deal with the conflicts and adversity of life in a in a better way. That's a perfect connection for these two houses right now. Or you could look at Mercury and Mars in these in this position, and you could say there's going to be a lot of work, a lot of effort and a lot of sacrifice when it comes to building anything, building your skills as an astrologer, building your skills as an entrepreneur, building your business, whatever. In the ancient world, it might be more like farm work, or, you know, agriculture, or building your fire, or going to the well every day, but it's the chop wood, carry water house, regardless of what era we live in. And the question here is, how do you live in that world without losing yourself to feeling insane and overwhelmed and unhealthy, you know? How do you engage with the hard work of life while still feeling vibrant? There's a lot of connection right now for cancers that is taking place between these two houses that can give you a new way of of living in the adverse conditions of life more successfully, more vibrantly. So that's what I would look at for cancers, in addition to maybe some of the more mundane things, like who you employ, or who you hire, or what have you. All right, let's move on now to Leos. So let's see here. All right, so for Leo's, we're looking at the fifth house, the Dharma house, and then we're connecting Jupiter in Cancer in the 12th as the host. So fifth house, the joy derived from one's dharma. What that means is that, ideally, if you get more in touch with who you are, the natural byproduct is you feel happier. I will tell you right now that the most substantive thing that happened when I got back from drinking Ayahuasca in the Amazon was not just, oh, I'm sober because doing drugs is bad. That was not what happened. And I don't think that's what happens for a lot of people when they get sober. If you have problems drinking and you get sober, a more accurate way of describing that transformation is to say, I realized that I am not someone who is going I am not a drug addict. I am a that is not who I am. So it's like, it's like, deeper than saying I'm not going to engage in a bad behavior anymore. When I came back from the Amazon and I was sober because Ayahuasca helped me, it felt like it helped me because it showed me that's just not who you are, and it doesn't like and if it's not who you are, you. You're not going to be happy, and if you are who you are, you're going to feel happier. And I am not someone who is going to do drugs and think that that's me like I was doing, you know, hard opiates. So the what's so cool about the fifth house is that it basically rewards you for just being yourself and and that doesn't for most, a lot of people think about the fifth house, and they think that it's like, you know, like a like a, you know, wish upon a star, create some big magnum opus with your life. It's a book, it's a movie, you know, it's so theatrical. But in ancient astrology, especially Indian astrology, the meaning of the Fifth house is so much simpler. It's so much more boring in a way. It's like, Where does your true joy comes from? Come from? It comes from in every moment, feeling like the way you respond, the way you communicate, is just so simply in touch with the truth of who you are. You know the difference if you're not being true to who you are, a simple moment of how you talk to someone in line at the store will make you feel uncomfortable, and then that discomfort leads to what anxiety or self consciousness, and then it takes 10 minutes to get rid of that self consciousness and to come back to yourself in the car ride home, whereas if you have a simple interaction at the grocery store, and you just feel like you're living from a little pulsing light that's inside of you, and it's just coming from that space, that interaction makes you feel happy, and it's a meaningless interaction, from the standpoint of how we tend to judge or evaluate things that gives you joy.

So the fifth house is really about that simple level of authenticity and living from our creative core in the fifth house is usually not about big projects, you know, a big Etsy page or something, which is fine, but it's really about just like, do you feel like you? And if you do, the natural byproduct is joy. Well, if you're a Leo right now, the question is, why don't you feel like you? Or where have you started relaxing on some of your core beliefs, your core values, your core commitments or convictions, to the point that you're starting to emotionally undermine yourself and drift from your center. That would be a really appropriate meditation right now, given the presence of the ruler in the 12th, with these two planets retrograde in the fifth. If there is a place right now where you can be more pointedly, sort of more passionately, you know yourself. Or how do you get back there if you lost it, or what? And there may be a creative act. You can do many creative acts jumpstart that feeling of being back in my center. Maybe it is time to paint or dance or make an album or, I mean, it could be time for a creative project, but being clear that creative project is just serving coming back into this little luminous place within us. Interesting. This place was called The Joy of Venus, and it's associated with a natural, easy, everyday feeling of flow and pleasure, harmony and happiness. So how do you get back there, if you're a Leo or what do you have to do to shift your relationship. I mean, if you only feel good because you're being critical, and you always have to be the center of attention, and you're getting some feedback from people right now that like people are telling you you're a jerk. Okay, well, that may not be the easiest thing to hear, but I think there's nothing more offensive to a good Leo than feeling like they're not being seen for who they are, and they're not being liked because they're good, we're all there's like in Leo, there's like a child in us that needs to be reminded you're good, you're you're really good. It's like Mr. Rogers, you know, how do you get back there if you've drifted from it? Leos can become asses sometimes, and I know because I've got Venus in Leo as my ascendant ruler, could just become a bit of a dick. And then it's like, Why do you think you're so great? And it's like, oh, I guess I'm not. I don't want to be that way, you know. And then you come back to your heart, and you can be just as beautiful and bright, but you're kind and you're you're generous, you have a magnanimous heart. So how do you how do you get back to that if you lost it, or how do you double down on that if it needs more? What are the creative acts or habits in your life that lend themselves to a greater well being? Maybe you could look at some unconscious emotional dynamics stemming from family or home or ancestry in the background with Jupiter in the 12th and cancer too. Okay, let's go to you can feel it. The wave of dark chocolate is carrying me All right. Let's go to Virgo. I'm.

Okay, so if you are Virgo rising or Virgo sun, you have Mercury and Mars conjoining in the fourth house, home, family, parents, land, inner or private sphere of life. And then Jupiter is in the 11th of groups, friends, communities and so forth.

So first of all, the retrogradation in the fourth house can be very mundane in terms of changes that have to be made in and or around the home. So is that retrograde suggesting that there is damage that's being repaired in the home, or a rearrangement or a revisioning of the space. I would also connect anything that's shifting or needing revision or change in the home to things that are connected to your beliefs. So the connection between religion, philosophy, morality, political ideology, and the home sphere of life. If you live in an environment where there are real tensions between what you believe in a partner believes, or what you believe and what your kids are getting into right now, or what you believe in what your very conservative parents believe or something like that. This might be a time where some of those tensions are being heightened and explored, and certain kinds of confrontations are being had, but all of it can serve a really important purpose, which is to get clear about on the inside, what are my values and beliefs, and are they helping me to create an inner feeling of refuge, safety, peace, relaxation, rest. The fourth place is called the resting place. It's a Moksha house, which means, ideally, it's a place that we go to, like we go to the well we draw from a place of nourishment. We go to a place for liberation from entanglement in the world and within this world are My office is a space for me that there's a lot of Moksha here. I release from the world and meditate sitting on my couch or in my altar or I play my guitar, but my bedroom, you know, the living room with the family that we have. Fourth house is a place of home and family is really a metaphor for a place we go to disengage with all of the activities of the material world. So the question right now might be about, you know, do if your if your beliefs are so intense on the inside that there's no ability to rest or relax because they don't let you. You know, I've been around lots of different people over the years, and I have found that there are many people who have beliefs that I agree with. But I will say that I've I've noticed that some people, even if they have the same beliefs that I do, on a certain level, are fanatical about the things the you know and another person may be able to carry the same exact beliefs without becoming fanatical. One of the benefits of not carrying your beliefs, even if they are good and virtuous fanatically, is that you're not going to stress yourself out and contribute to your own downfall and demise. You're if you're fanatical, even if you have the right beliefs, you're going to erode your health, your well being, your relationships are going to suffer because you're zealous. And so how do I carry beliefs in a way that still allows me rest, comfort, ease, peace? Now, in some spaces, it may not be possible. Certain stands have to be taken. Moral courage and conviction is necessary. Fighting is sometimes necessary. But the question of how much stress and drama Do you really want around friends, family, community, how much peace are your beliefs affording you? That might be something to really look at right now, Virgo rising sometimes can be sort of sneaky, sneakily rigid, even for a Mercury ruled sign. Now, the other thing I would look at would be about confrontations or conflicts of belief or value or philosophy that are happening within communities or groups of people or within home or family, and then maybe any kinds of revisions or clarification that needs to happen, like, what do I believe and who does that best pair me with, in terms of friends, community, family, etc, all right, now, let's move along. To libre.

I'm all right.

Okay, sorry, guys, let's get this all set up here. So for Libra, the retrograde and conjunction between Mercury and Mars is happening in the third house with Jupiter in the 10th so with this connection, first of all, let's expand upon the third house I was describing this, I think, in last week's horoscopes. This has been one of my most surprising and exciting discoveries while studying the purusharthas, or the philosophical domains of the chart in Indian astrology. So the the third house is a comma house, which means it's a house that has to do with where or how we find pleasure, happiness, mentally and emotionally, physically. So the the underlying sort of interest in this house is how to feel good, mentally, again and emotionally. Well, part of how we feel good is by communicating or conveying thoughts and ideas, like I have a son in mercury in the third house, and I feel like a lot of my life has been about learning that I really feel my best and I'm at my best when I'm writing, speaking, thinking, talking, and most of my life, from an early age, I was not good at those things. I wanted to be good at them, because any moment where maybe I spoke clearly or understood something, or communicated something, or wrote something and got any praise or attention for it, it shown above everything else. I was just talking last night to my daughter, who is writing her first little book. She writes lots of little books, but now, knowing that daddy's just finished a book, she's like, I'm going to write a big one. It's going to be a long one, just like yours. I was like, Okay, let's let's do it. And I was reflecting on the fact that when I was a kid and I started writing stories, I had several teachers who poured encouragement and praise on me for writing those stories, and when they did that, it it made because I was, I had no like, self esteem or confidence or around writing or communicating. I was incredibly shy kid. And it's funny like that, because you like, oh, he talks for a living. He must have been just such a chatterbox. No, early on, I was really shy and didn't have a lot of confidence. Was very insecure about speaking about my mind, about my intellect, all of those things. The third house is about what we're building or cultivating, developing through effort and practice that will produce within us a feeling that my ego, my brain, my communication abilities, my psychological and interior life as it comes out into the world as a source of happiness. For me, a lot of people's self esteem rests on the third house in Indian astrology. Your sense of like, how interesting Are you? How smart are you? How easily can you talk or convey things? What is your interior, psychological, emotional life like, and is it a source of happiness like? Do you enjoy your own head? That's all part of the third house in Indian astrology. I love that. I think it makes so much sense for someone who's, you know, got a few planets there, but also people I've worked with so many people over the years with third house planets. So Mercury and Mars, when they meet in this house for Librans, may be providing you with some pretty intense feedback in terms of your mind, your emotional or psychological makeup. And this could be a time where you're getting some feedback that says there's something you could get a little bit better at, there's a skill you could develop. There's mental there's room for mental and emotional growth. You may be getting feedback right now that feels hostile or that feels like confrontational, maybe specifically in the workplace or around your workplace environment. Maybe that feedback is unfair. Maybe you need to stand up for yourself, and this is a great opportunity to build greater self esteem and confidence, because you speak out and don't let someone walk on you, don't let someone speak down to you. On the other hand, maybe this is a time where that feedback. Lack is coming because it's time to get better at something. It's time to level up. It's time to develop a bit more of a skill set, time to grow confidence, because you turn a lack into something that you have. I, rather than lacking this, I'm going to develop and cultivate this. This would also be a time where potential conflicts, communication in conflict with siblings could occur, or in your everyday environment, this would not be uncommon, by the way, to see people have like changes in vehicles, or, you know, like a your check engine light comes on or something. Knock on wood. We won't we hope that doesn't happen, but the potential for something very mundane in the everyday environment that you traverse and move through, kind of like your neighborhood. Could, you know, need some adjusting, or go through like a little moment of adversity or hardship. But the connection right now also between the realm of communication and mental emotional dynamics, and then your career space are the two. Two are the two spaces to look for the connection. I would wonder about what like, what growth has been taking place in your career, and in what way is that now connected to the need for a different kind of skill set, or the continued development of a particular type of skill in your workplace, or certain kinds of conversations or conflicts that are arising around the workplace, something like that. All right. Okie dokie, let's go to Scorpio. We get further along, and the intervals between chocolate nibbles decreases. Okay, if you're a Scorpio, we're looking at the mercury Mars conjunction in your second house. That is the place of money, assets, acquisitions, resources. Sorry, I've got something buzzing in my phone. Let me just turn

this off. I turning notifications off is always a pain.

Okay, so questions about money, assets, resources, if you own or operate a business, changes in the organization, the products, the offerings, would be totally fitting for this kind of retrograde. If there is a deeper philosophical connection between money, assets, resources and material acquisitions or gains and things like religion, spirituality, faith that would be totally fitting right now, questions about money and financing educational, education endeavors. How am I going to pay for myself to go to school and again, like most of us, at some point, have to explore, how do my faith and beliefs intersect with things like money and the material world? It is way too easy, as someone who grew up seeing this happen to my dad as a preacher, that people, people have this belief, usually it's projected onto a minister who usually ministers aren't paid very much. Or social workers, by the way, this happens to social workers too. I've seen in when I was a social worker, where they're like, well, you're doing something that's humanitarian, or you're doing something spiritual, or you're doing something religious, which means naturally, making any kind of money or doing well in the world materially is is fundamentally opposite or at odds with the integrity of your spiritual vocation or your humanitarian or charitable interests or whatever. That binary for most of us, doesn't work, right? So you know, because no one's going to be free of the hypocrisy of of living in a material world with material tastes and interests, with a level of a level of our being that tells us constantly, and they can't deny, that certain material things make us happy, like a good meal at a fun restaurant makes you happy having certain things. I mean, some people, more than others, are going to be like maxing out their credit cards and buying all sorts of things they don't need. And of course, I'm not advocating for that, but to deny that we're material beings just because we're spiritual beings, doesn't it? That's just never going to work. So the conversation for Scorpios right now, between material things and spiritual things, between your beliefs, the cultivation of knowledge, wisdom, release. Religion, spirituality and things like money, business, assets, how much or what kind of like? How much pleasure should I derive from material things compared to things that are less tangible, like spirituality, education, religion? That's the dialog right now for Scorpios. There could also be some question about how to incorporate things that you've learned, like if you've gone through a training, if you've learned astrology, then the question becomes, how do I start a business based on, you know, the training that I've received? So questions between what you're learning or what skills and wisdom you're building, and how to translate that into serviceable products or business or something that could be up for review right now as well. How do you spend your time, money, energy resources, and how can your approach to those things be in alignment with your spiritual path in life that comes to mind? Excuse me.

All right for Sagittarians, this is taking place in your first house, the place of identity. This is a Dharma house. So this is we were talking earlier about how to be yourself and being in touch with your own essence. Well, this is the primary place where that essence lives and breathes and transits to this house almost always involve its ongoing cultivation. Being who I am is not as simple as in one way, it is as simple as just being, but in another way, we can live with illusion. And living with illusion, it means, you know, living in ignorance of who we really are, and that creates pain and suffering, one one of a number of ways of alleviating pain and suffering, according to ancient astrologers, is to cultivate a clear sense of exactly who you are. We cultivate that by saying no to things as much as we cultivate by saying cultivate it. By saying yes to things. We cultivate it through exploration, experimentation, the Choose Your Own Adventure. Book of Life is constantly giving us opportunities to get to know who we are, and there's nothing we're not expected to know who we are right from the get go, every life is a process of getting to know who we are, and in some ways, we get to know who we are precisely at the moment that it's time to go. Isn't that wild. But here is a moment for Sagittarians to really reflect deeply on who you are, and is who you are creating stress and chaos and destructiveness, or is it creating happiness? Are you living in alignment with your convictions, your beliefs? Are you walking your talk, and if not, what needs to change? And then with Jupiter in the eighth house, that question of who you are, in this kind of crossroads, moment of reflecting upon your own nature and what you need to do or change or shift to be more in touch with it, is being informed by questions about your emotional bonds, your emotional attachments, family karma, the emotional give and take, what other people provide you with, and what you provide other people with, those soul exchanges, a Karma that's exchanged around things like family and emotional bonds in the eighth house with Jupiter and cancer there. So this is the exploration for Sagittarians. It's it's a really interesting moment to be looking at like this could be a point of departure where you go. I have to separate myself from my family of origin, because, you know, as painful as that is, I mean, I've talked to hundreds of people over the course of my career who have had to say, I can't be in contact with certain people any longer in my family. I love them, but it's harming me. Or, you know, this is the boundary that I have to create. On the other hand, sometimes the greatest lesson is about pardoning and forgiving and learning to live with the fact that some people in your life are just never going to be exactly who or what you hoped they would be. But that doesn't mean they are nothing, and that kind of middle space is hard for us because we get so disappointed someone doesn't play the role of a father in a good, healthy way, and they really mess up. Sometimes they just can't be in our lives, but other times, we have to take the small little things that they did give somehow accept the failures that came along with it, and live with them as a complex character that was not entirely good or bad. It may be more disappointing than good, but. Doesn't necessarily mean that there's someone who has to be banished from life, either, but figuring all of that out is a complicated emotional karmic like calculus. So that could be coming up right now for you, Sagittarians, all right, Capricorns, all right, Mercury and Mars in your 12th house with Jupiter in the seventh.

This one's tricky, because there's a real like the 12th house is such a blind spot. You get in touch with the 12th house in a psychedelic experience, in ketamine therapy, in maybe a dream, or when a life crisis or sickness comes up, and it really shows you something that you couldn't see until you entered this space where you don't have the same health or sanity or control or your ego can't be as powerful getting to see that blind spot. It's a life giving place. It's a healing place, it's a very liberating place, and yet it's a place we don't always have control over, we can't always see, and most of the time, when things come up in this house, initially, it feels threatening or a little scary, but that encounter and how we meet it and how we work through it can be so healing if, if we have a little bit of faith, trust, maybe a little bit of surrender. All important keywords for the 12th house, the mercury Mars conjunction here could be about communication, dynamics, beliefs, how we hold beliefs, whether the way we hold beliefs or walk our talk or not is undermining us or acting unconsciously. The connection between this blind spot, this unconscious place, and the realm of relationships, marriage, home and family, with Jupiter and cancer in the seventh comes to mind. You might for example, I could see a Capricorn realizing that I have a lovely family, but I am undermining the beauty of this home, family and the safety and security of my bond because I am so mentally, verbally, emotionally intense. I can't turn the volume down. I struggle with it. I struggle with my anger. I struggle with irritability, and my gosh, I'm just poisoning the well, what a hard realization that would be, you know, and yet that's that's a lot of us deal with that. I mean, even if it's not so severe, we might have a moment where we just go, there are ways that I'm not I'm bringing a lot of unnecessary drama and pain around my home or my family, the people I love or live with, and that's not comfortable to have to reflect on our own ego in that way. But then if we do, we can, we'll find that, oh my gosh, all the people around me love me. They're willing to forgive me, they're willing to help me grow, help me be help remind me about what I'm trying to get better at. So emotional honesty about our our most, our kind of worst, shadowy habits or behaviors may be met with a lot of support and love, more than we expect, if we're willing to be honest, that I could see between these two houses for Capricorns, on the other hand, invisible or hidden or secretive dimensions of Things in relationships or in home and family backgrounds, the intersection between the person I'm with and their family of origin, and how were they raised, and how was I raised, and being able to see some of those subtle dynamics and how they're impacting things. It's like therapy, right? Like you get it, you have that moment in therapy where you go, you know what? I've never can I've never taken enough time to consider that my husband was raised in this kind of an environment. And that might be contributing to this or that, what a breakthrough that can be. So being in touch with unconscious or hidden dynamics and their relationship to things like home, family and marriage is again, what I would see here. All right, let's go to Aquarians. I So Mercury Mars in the 11th house with the ruler Jupiter in the sixth. So this is another comma house that's associated with pleasure and happiness and a feeling of vibrancy and well being like, ideally, our social reality. So let me give you my social reality, right? My social reality is all of you fools. I'm just kidding. It's all of you wonderful people, and it's the astrological community, and it was our yoga studio community. Um, and in a in a broader way, probably other like, like, spiritual New Age, etc, etc. So that that constitutes a lot of the my 11th house reality. Well, not surprisingly, my 11th house is filled with Pisces. So, um, yeah, get a like, a lot of my social environment is very Piscean, religious, spiritual. I grew up in religious, spiritual community as a preacher's kid in the church that house not only describes the social, public, kind of community dynamic of life, but the happiness that we're supposed to derive from it, as well as the advantages that come from the people within it that contribute to our ambitions. So for Aquarians right now, the hard thing is that you may be going through a period of conflict, confrontation, hostility, or let's call it like a having to really reflect on who the right people are for you or not, and that there could be a lot of hostility and conflict within groups or communities. You could find that there's competition envy or just kind of bitter or intense competitive rivalry, type of dynamics happening in groups or communities, you could also find that there's a level of like social opportunism that's that's present or tempting. You go do this, this will be advantageous for you, but it's real calculated and maybe, maybe not so, not so heart centered. On the other hand, if your your deepest, most important beliefs and convictions are not a part of the social fabric of your life, if you're just with the wrong people that don't share the same beliefs and values, this could be a really good time to sit with that for a minute. The question of Jupiter in the sixth, to me, is also about charitable work, service work, healing, work, helping work. Jupiter and cancer in the sixth has such a like nurturing, supportive and healing presence, like, where is your work in the world, contributing to health, healing, well being for yourself and others. So some connection between the very like active healing work of Jupiter in the sixth and its desire to be like a great mother, you know, to yourself and to humanity, is also playing a pretty strong role in whatever conflicts or process of reflection is taking place around groups and community. All right. Finally, Pisces, we have the mercury Mars conjunction in the 10th house with Jupiter in Cancer in the fifth house. So the place of career is the obvious starting point here, but reputation, power, influence in the world. What say or authority do you have in the workplace? What level of skill or mastery Are you in the process of achieving in what way are your roles or responsibilities shifting? What changes are happening internally in a company you work for, what kinds of conflicts of power with power or authority are taking place? How are you reflecting upon your core beliefs right now, and how are those reflections leading to some reorienting of how you work or what specifically you do. The question of Jupiter in the fifth leads to a question of creative fulfillment. Is there a natural sense of my work being creatively fulfilling? Really important right now for Pisceans that there be some element of emotional satisfaction and creative fulfillment, like I'm being myself, and there's some happiness derived from being myself in the workplace or in my vocation or in the skills and abilities I'm developing for the sake of earning a Living or whatever. So questions between authentic creative essence and work in the world, and how you're doing it, or where you're doing it, maybe what you're doing, those are the things that come to mind for me here. One thing I will also say is that these two planets in this house will often bring more public levels of contention, like, be careful of getting engaged in a big public conflict online or in the workplace, or you could drag yourself into more public notoriety than you want. Like, don't forget, infamy is here too. So be careful, like putting your foot in your mouth. Which Mercury and Mars are you? Know prone to do and saying something you'll regret, especially in a more public or visible way or space. The other thing that comes to my mind is, is

there some connection between your core beliefs and what you're doing? And sometimes I maybe one of the most popular things that people come to talk to astrologers about is that they don't feel like they're they're living in touch with their values or beliefs in relation to the work they do. That, I think, is a product in part of the materialistic age we're living in that is sort of a dharmic naturally, but it's also, it's pervasive, you know? I mean, you're not alone in experiencing that, if you are. All right, we did it. We got through all 12 signs. All right, that's enough. That's my last piece of dark chocolate for the day. But it got me through so I needed a little treat. I need to say thank you to myself for doing these things. Now, let's open up for some Q and A maybe just like 15 or 20 minutes. But first, before we do that, I'm going to take you over to the Kickstarter, which starts on Monday of next week. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about that, just a little preview. Remember, if you joined late, you can still the year one course starts Saturday, not too late to join. Go to the year one course on the page. Use the need based tuition, if it will help. And hope to see some of you there. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you the here we go. Okay, so on Monday, the Kickstarter will go live, and for the last 40 some days of the year, we will be fundraising to support this channel, our staff and the production of seven day a week, free content year round. If you value this channel, there's a really easy way that you can say thank you and support us and make sure that we can keep doing this. You'll have a link on Monday that will take you over to the Kickstarter, and when you scroll down, you'll find that there are all of these rewards you can receive. We'll have an astrology of 2026 calendar that maps out all the transits for the year. There's a talk I did on how to cultivate a practice of silent sitting and listening, which you may benefit from, and some advice on how to start a practice the astrology of 2026 video is an exclusive lecture covering all of the major events of 2026 I don't release it anywhere but through the Kickstarter, When you donate to support the channel. There's a guided meditation and visualization that I've created for your year ahead, you could pick up my next book, which I'll be starting after I've finished this book. I'm starting another book next summer, so you can hop in on the early release of those chapters. Year ahead, horoscope readings. This will be about six hours worth of content covering all sun and rising signs for the major events of 2026 so that's like super awesome reward. There's a whole bunch of master classes from previous years that are bundled together. You can look at our astrology for complete beginners course, a horary service you could choose. There's a very small, limited amount of mini readings for your year ahead that I personally record for you on your birth chart. I don't do readings anymore. I have handed that off to students in my programs, and I only do readings in classrooms now as as demonstrations. And then you'll see, as you scroll down, archived master class bundles. New Master class on the decans for 2026 our new guild membership, my wife's herbal courses. And then the best thing we offer, which are our course bundles. So if you want to bundle courses together at Nightlight and save for classes in 2026 or beyond, all of our class passes will be available through the Kickstarter, easily the best sale of the year. And not only is it the best sale of the year, but it's a way to support this channel, again, a staff of people that make it possible for me to lead a school year round, in addition to making free content and producing it seven days a week. So if you love Nightlight, I'll be asking you daily to support us, starting next Monday through the end of the year. Okay, well, thank you for letting me do my promotions today, and I would love to hear your questions and let me just have something beeping at me. So I.

It All

right. So if you have questions, feel free to post them in the chat, and I'll take a few right now, before we leave Adam, you should do the THC infused chocolate next the signs next time I want to see Pisces at 200 milligrams. Oh, my god, yeah, um, I honestly, like I was saying this the other day, but I can take half of a five milligram gummy and I'll be absolutely flying. One thing that people don't often understand is that you know, if you if you work with something like ayahuasca, level potency for a really long time, like I did for 10 years, a two and a half milligram gummy is ridiculously strong for someone like me compared to what most people will experience because of how porous my psyche became from working with ayahuasca for so long. So, yeah, I just have to be super careful, like it takes me barely anything and I, I will maybe have some. THC, like, a couple of times a year. That's it. And typically, like, when we've gone to the dead and company shows with my wife, Oh, you did good. Adam, Oh, thanks, yeah, got through it. You survived today's episode sponsored by dark chocolate. Yeah, exactly. Let's see here, I'm going down. What are your thoughts on Electional Astrology? Yeah, great. You know, I don't study it. I don't practice it. I think the role of Electional Astrology, ideally should be for us to make choices and choose times to do things with greater awareness, alignment, sensitivity, and if it's serving those purposes, then brilliant for me, I already have the I Ching as my primary, sort of like electional voice, you could say, so I don't. It's never appealed to me for that reason. But yeah, nothing wrong with it at all. If people are using it to try to control things, then I think we have a problem. But people can do that with anything. So that is so interesting. I would have thought it would be the opposite. Yeah, that yeah because, right? Because then it's like, you're not like, oh yeah, you've drank so much ayahuasca, like, what is, what is? THC, but it's actually the opposite. The more you open your psyche to this like psychedelic multi dimensionality, the easier it becomes to open it with less over time for many people, but that tends to only be the case for people who work with really potent psychedelics like Iboga or ayahuasca, especially Some of the jungle brews of Ayahuasca that include like 1011 plants, the sensitivity to entheogens goes up. It's not like where it takes more alcohol to get you drunk. You know, it's an interesting thing, though. What kind of person would be a good candidate for Ayahuasca therapy or experimentation? Well, I wouldn't, I would not recommend experimenting with it. I mean, I get what you're saying, but I would recommend going to a reputable Center in South America with an indigenous Curandero who has been a part of a lineage. And in that setting, I think the only thing that matters is that you clear the the medical background, that requirements and that you have some network of support set up when you get back. I think that's important, like you can speak with someone and help integrate the experience, but otherwise, that you just, you have a sincere, you know, intention to grow and learn and heal. I think that's really all that qualifies us. You know, I'm having a hard time organizing all the transits, things. I'm tracking resources, etc, any advice or techniques you use for organizing all your information. That's a great question. I really like this question. It's, I think it's very thoughtful to ask that, and to be honest about that, because most of us are actually the same. You know, there's only so much space that we have for new information and astrology. There's no shortage of like information and astrology or techniques or approaches or charts. Charts or transits or cycles or tracking advice, or whatever. I'll remember. I remember, forget, Stephen Forrest saying one of the things we're always trying to do in astrology is, is get the chart to shut up. And he was joking, but he was going on to say that basically, like, we're we, we have to, we're going to we're going to look at a chart in the beginning. We're going to see so many things, and we're not going to know what to prioritize or how to organize. But what, what we're looking to do in time is to be able to sort through all of the things we're seeing and pluck out something that is important, that's relevant, that's like a good mantra for astrology is, say few things, but say them. Well, use fewer techniques, but use them. Well, there's this great misunderstanding that comes with the gradual objectification and like empiricization of astrology over time, which is that objective astrology includes all of the things, because it's like science. Well, in order to have a complete theory, you have to include all of the data, and you have to understand how it all works together. But that's not astrology. Astrology doesn't work like that. That would be like saying that you need every single card in the Tao for an accurate spread. Astrology is divinatory, and that means that there's a kind of logic to it. There's a it's a kind of spiritual science of symbols and omens, and there's a lot of deep philosophy behind its organization. But the great myth is that you need all of the stuff. You need all of the things, you need all the information and data for it to be somehow complete. You absolutely don't. You could choose to focus on, you know, the you could like, let's just say, for example, you're tracking a Jupiter Saturn cycle, and you find that in the tracking, the conjunction and oppositions are the easiest to see. Well, great. Throw out the rest, then you don't need all if you can see the symbols speaking clearly at a new and full moon. But it's harder for you to track the waxing sextile or the waning sextile, and don't fucking track it. That's it. It's like that simple. You know, you don't have to include every last thing for astrology to be a really valuable spiritual tool in your life. You know you have to find what works, and you have to find like what your own saturation level is, and get confident to work within that, that space, most of the things that we are not taught as astrologers have to do with all the things we don't need, all the things we don't have to include or consider for the astrology to become more substantive and effective. Instead, we're always given new tools, new workshops, new approaches, and over time, we a lot of people, will get to a point where they just feel like there's just too much, and then you have to walk away from all of it, because no one is telling you how to be less overwhelmed by what you're doing or how you're doing it. And that's like, like, a vital role that astrology teachers should play in our lives is like, there's a lot of static. You're looking for signal, and more techniques usually leads to more static, not signal.

That's how I'm taking in Current Events Exactly. Now, I don't mean to I'm not telling anyone how they ought to take in the news. But one thing that I know is that we have a threshold for how much drama and bad news we can hear. And so, you know, each of us has the task of, like, staying, I guess, somewhat civically aware without crashing our system from the negativity. You have to be really careful about that. We're sensitive little creatures and like, like, how do you do that? You know, it's the same thing with astrology. Astrology is like this teeming, psychedelic mandala of information and symbols. But if you try to take all of it in, it's like trying to like, it's like staying glued to a never ending, 24 hour news cycle. No wonder people are always asking, When will the astrology calm down? When will the drama of the planets not be so much? It's not so much. Just turn off the turn off the stream of information that you're tuning into, or be more selective about how you're using it. This is an Oracle, not a news stream. You know, you go to an Oracle. It's sort of like this. A lot of people in non ritualistic psychedelic spaces, they take a psychedelic and there's no ritual, there's no guidance, there's no music, there's no there's no container. You're opening up that psychedelic space, but the infinitude of that. Space will often be very overwhelming for people. Whereas, if you move not always, but like a lot of the times, if you move into a ritual space where there's music, there's an arc emotionally and unlike ritualistically, you will find that the shape that the space takes becomes more personal and more relevant and more healing. And it's that's happening because you have a container through which the infinite can pour through in a psychedelic experience. Now, again, I'm not to say that I'm just flat against exploration or non ritual uses or whatever. Like Terence McKenna clearly had a lot of that, and he did a pretty good job of navigating that space. He's a great example of someone who didn't always use ritual, but he also was very clear about set and setting. So it's just a little bit different, but it's the same idea. The point being that with astrology, it's no different if you just turn your sky, if you just turn your head to the sky and look up through the astrological lens without any reason for being there without any context, even if it's the loosest context, like I'm just here to learn, but I'm I'm here, I'm arriving. I have an intention. It's to learn without that awareness. It's just like turning yourself open to the acid channel. You know it's like, and most people don't even realize that's what they're doing to themselves when they expose themselves. When they expose themselves to astrology. What to speak of the so many practitioners out there who amplify that experience of astrology by being sensational about every single thing that they talk about, and talking about every single thing like it's as important as everything else, and not being selective about how you talk about things, not offering a kind of ritual container for how astrology is disseminated. It's completely irresponsible. But anyway, I was like mercury Mars. I'm going to start. I'm going to start, you know, I'm going to start moaning and bitching up a storm here, if I'm if I'm not careful, I

let's see. Okay, I think I'm not seeing any more questions. Might be a good time to oh, this is a good one. How do you help someone who is agnostic about spiritual beliefs want to believe but is deeply taught doubts? How can I help that person especially to manifest?

Okay? This is a good question. I think this is also a sign for me that I'm at the end of my rope today. So I'm going to answer this question that I'm going to close. First of all, I really do mean it. It's a good question. Now, first of all, this is just my advice, right? So I'm one schmuck. Take it or leave it. How do you help someone who has agnostic about spiritual beliefs? My my response to that is, why do you need to help them? Right? You don't. This is just me. You take it or leave it. But like, What's wrong with being agnostic? Nothing. Listen when you go into like these altered states that I've been describing, one thing that many people experience, I'm not the first to say this, is that there is every single thing in reality has a place. Agnosticism has a place. Atheism has a place. Atheism and agnosticism are not in the scope of eternity. Paradoxically, they are also deeply spiritual perspectives that a soul has for a specific reason at a specific point in their evolutionary journey. To not just let someone be where they're at is far greater a problem than to be agnostic in my humble perspective. And I'm not trying to be mean to you, right? It's just, what I would say is like, just let that person be agnostic the feeling of, I don't know, I don't know what I believe. I don't know if this is true or if that is true. I don't know if there's a God or there's not a god. I'm not against it, but I'm not really for it. If that is where a person is honestly at there's nothing wrong with that. In the scope of eternity. There's nothing at stake that perspective is granting them a very specific kind of experience of themselves, of divinity, of reality, of other souls that can't be had through any other way but that. And that is okay. It's blessed. It's sacred. Just let it be. Don't try to convert them. Don't try to convert anybody you know. And then so that that's what I would say. Just live with them, appreciate them, get curious about what the benefits of their perspective might be, that maybe you. Don't see or haven't considered that is that could be really positive in the relationship. And if there's any way that someone may need a faith based perspective, and maybe the gods are trying to gently lead them in that direction, they're going to get there because people in their life take a sincere interest in seeing them, not in guiding them or teaching them or pushing them or converting them, but in seeing them. Wow. How interesting that you're agnostic. What does that mean to you? How do you experience life that's really interesting. It's so different than mine. I have this faith perspective. These are, like, my beliefs, but like, I'm really going to try to step into that and try to see the world, how you see it, and if you can find beauty in that, it's like my daughter. She thinks for a long time I don't like mustard, but then one day, randomly, she just decided that she was going to try it and give it a chance, and then all of a sudden, she likes mustard. You may think, I'm not agnostic. I have a spiritual belief, and that's right. Agnosticism is wrong. Well, how do you know you know what I mean. That's the benefit of agnosticism too. Is like, maybe there's something there for you, you can step into and just go, like, well, maybe I don't know anything, and maybe my spiritual view isn't necessary for me to walk a divine path in life. Isn't that profound? Seems paradoxical. Seems like you have to have a spiritual belief, to walk a spiritual path. But maybe spirituality does not depend upon your belief. You know what I mean. Maybe reality doesn't depend upon your beliefs. These are the kinds of things, though, that like an agnostic friend, can open us to if we allow ourselves to be open. And then paradoxically, if there's any opening to be had in their heart for our perspective, it comes because we take that step. You step towards someone in your heart, and then, you know, hearts open on both sides. That's how I would help. If I would start with not thinking that there's any help that's needed, I would start by seeing this person as complete and whole and beautiful and be curious about them. Then the second part of the question, How can I help that person, especially to manifest? I'm sure that there's more context behind the second part of that question, like maybe you see or experience them being stuck in things they don't want, and you feel like if you could just get them to visualize a little bit more be a little bit more, be a little bit more positive, maybe set intentions that maybe they'd get unstuck, or maybe they would get more of what they really want, but they're having a hard time getting and that could be like a really benevolent, you know, like, concern that you have for them, right? And I get, so I get, I if it's coming from that kind of space, like, of course, you would want to see someone helping themselves more by being more positive, or, you know, like visualizing where they want to go in life. So I get all of that at the same time. One thing that I would recommend is pushing back again gently against your own perception of the situation in the opposite direction. Consider, there's doesn't remember, two things can be true, your view of manifestation, what manifestation involves, how it works, how it happens, why it's beneficial, can all be true, and something else can be true. How about this? Nothing. There is nothing manifesting. Think about like the Buddhist idea of CO arising, interdependence, simultaneousness, which is reality from the from the perspective of Samadhi. From that perspective, nothing is manifesting. Everything just is. And so to attribute, I do this and then I manifest that is to attribute an illusory series of actions and reactions to something that doesn't actually work that way. So in other words, maybe the problem is in thinking that you have the power to manifest anything at all. Maybe the maybe the issue has more to do with thinking that manifestation is a thing. But again, two things can be true. The idea here isn't to cancel out what you think. It's more to say, what would, how would you experience this person, if you thought about the issue you think they have with manifestation in terms of a totally different view of reality, what if not a blade of grass moves in all of creation without the complete ordinance of God, whatever you may call God, Higher Self, reality itself, whatever in that way. What if you or I? What if none of us manifest anything? What if, in this great oneness, there's only one thing, and it's manifesting everything, and you can't control any of it. You're not in control of. Any of it, you may have a temporary illusion of feeling like you're controlling things and manifesting, but that's all an illusion, right? Again, consider these things and they may shift or soften your view, not because it's not that one necessarily has to be right and wrong if we need to become more multi dimensional in how we think about what reality is. Is there a causal plane where things are manifested? Sure. Why not? But could there also be this a causal plane where manifestation is an idea that really doesn't make any sense, and if I enter into that space, how could I see my friend differently, who I think has this big problem manifesting. Do you see what I'm saying? So I hope that helps. I

All right, I think we're going to end here, because I'm about ready for lunch. There's no more chocolate left. All of the goodness has been drained out of my soul. I don't believe in manifestation. I'm an agnostic. All of you have drained all of the goodness out of me. I'm just playing. I love you guys. This has been really fun. I am. I'm definitely going to go grab some sourdough that that's really that's awesome. Yeah. So have a great afternoon. Remember, Kickstarter begins on Monday. Year one course starts this weekend. Come join us not too late. Use the need based tuition if you need it otherwise. Next week I'll be doing horoscopes again on the new moon. So that new moon opposite Uranus with the mercury cazimi. I'll be covering Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday. We'll be getting together at 10am Central for another live stream talk. I'll be doing these probably weekly throughout the end of the year, here to rally support for the Kickstarter. Please, on Monday, when the Kickstarter begins, be right on it. Help us get off to a really strong, fast start that really makes a huge difference in terms of momentum. When people see it growing, because all of our most Die Hard, loyal people pitch in right away, it really carries us. It's a huge deal to start really strong. So please help us if you can. On Monday, when things get started, I will see you again for more content on the channel tomorrow, right. Take it easy. Everyone. Bye. Hey everyone. Thanks for sticking around. I'm excited to tell you about our upcoming program, ancient astrology for the modern mystic. This is our first year course in Hellenistic astrology, and it begins again this November. In this video, I'm going to tell you about the course, the format of the course, and how to register. So let's go ahead and get into it. What is this course about? Well, if you are not familiar, ancient Hellenistic astrology is the earliest and original form of horoscopic astrology. All of the subsequent forms and schools of astrology that have existed over 1000s of years come from these philosophical and theoretical roots. And so what you're doing when you study Hellenistic astrology is, you're going back to understand the why behind absolutely everything. Why were there ever such a thing as houses and signs in the first place? How were the planets ever assigned to rule various portions of the Zodiac in the first place? How do you use the categories of essential dignity and why were they ever created in the first place. If you're someone like me, you like to know the why behind things, because once you understand the why, then you know how to use things more intuitively. So really, the point of Hellenistic astrology, in my opinion, is not so much about going back and becoming a traditional astrologer, or, you know, just being traditional for the sake of being traditional, as much as it is about grasping the roots of the entire system and paradigm. When you understand those roots, you have more intuition and understanding which allow for you to be much more artful and fluid in the way that you speak the language of astrology. We call this class ancient astrology for the modern mystic, because while it is about going back to understand the philosophical, theoretical, technical roots of the tradition, it's also about fluidly bridging those things with modern astrology and all of its most unique contributions. For example, modern astrology has given us so much psychological depth and personal depth, and so in a modern astrological setting, you're going to get the ability to explore your own character, your own psychology, and you're going to be able to utilize astrology for a process of healing and personal transformation. But when you pair that with ancient astrology, and it's almost like predictive karmic analytics. Is you really have a full toolkit to work with. And so that's also a great mission of ours at Nightlight, is to bridge ancient and modern forms, which is why we call the program ancient astrology for the modern mystics. So that's just a little kind of overview of the program. If you want to know more about the specifics of the curriculum and of the syllabus, what I encourage you to do is go over to Nightlight astrology.com, click on the Courses page, go to the first year course, scroll down, and you'll see this over 12 months, you'll learn about and here you're going to see more of a detailed breakdown of the curriculum itself. I can promise you that if you've studied astrology in modern context, but you've never gone back to the ancient roots. Well, some of these topics may look familiar to you, and you go, Oh, I've already learned about that, unless you've studied them. From the Hellenistic perspective, I guarantee that you are not going to be familiar with this content. Hellenistic astrology is mind blowingly new and interesting for most people, and if you've never studied it again, don't assume that anything on this list is something you're going to be familiar with. In that way, the program is really ideal for a variety of different people, and I'll say more about that in a second. So what is the format of the course? Let's go to that next scroll down and you're going to see that the course includes 30 online webinars that I lead throughout the year. Over the course of a year together, I have 30 classes that are broken into different units of material in between those classes, we have breakout study sessions with your course director and two TAs they're going to lead you through Q and A sessions and tutoring sessions to make sure that you have a lot of support in between major units of study. In addition, we also have an interactive group forum discussion where you can ask questions year round and get an answer within a business day in the student forum, where a lot of people also connect and build community. Lots of people in that forum also develop like little meetup groups outside of class. That's very common in all of our programs. It's a very community loving warm space where anyone's also welcome. Throughout the course, you're also going to find that for every lesson, if you're just there as a hobby student, you can just listen to the webinars. They're all recorded for you. So if you can't make the live webinars, everything is housed on the website as recordings. I'd say about 40 or 50% of our students are going to be following along at their own pace, whereas the other half might be attending the live webinars, but it's really kind of, you know, if you can attend a few, and then one week you got to be gone, the recordings are always there. You have lifetime access to everything in the course, so it's not a big deal for every lesson as well. If you're someone who wants to go really, really deep, maybe you have the intention to practice professionally. This course is set up with an optional certification exam at the end from our school, from our program. So you can, you know, if you want to build that resume and develop the the you know, the credentials from our programs, you can do that, but you also it's optional, so you don't have to. And outside of every lesson, we have recommended reading, we have supplemental bonus content, all of which is optional, but it's there for people who might want a lot more, whereas some people will take the webinars themselves, and that'll be plenty. So it's really flexible in that way. Also, this is one program within four years of curriculum that are meant to go together. And so most people who come through our first year program will end up taking our second year program, where we develop forecasting and prediction and transit tracking techniques our third year program, which is aimed at

Counseling and Psychology. So psychological counseling skills is our third year program, and then the Oracle within which is our exploration of the philosophical, spiritual roots of the divinatory oracular tradition of astrology. So there's a lot of material there. We also have another one year program in horary astrology, for some people who want to add that predictive tool to their toolkit. So there's just a lot of material at Nightlight that this class is actually just one part of which can be taken stand alone. Or for some people, they get into it. They're going to love it. You're going to hang out with us for three or four years worth of code. Three or four years worth of content. This program is ideal for a number of different types of students of astrology. I'll say that for for starters. So let's see here. I'll stop sharing this so we have like, there's a profile of the typical students who come through our courses, one is going to be people who just want a very guided introduction to ancient astrology, because you've never had it before. Maybe you're only familiar with modern and you want that guided, structured approach to learning traditional for the first time, also people who are brand new to astrology. In general, there's no better place to start than at the roots of the ancient foundations. So whether you're a total beginner or just a beginner to Hellenistic, this is a great place to start. If you are someone who's been around astrology for a long time, but you've never had a guided, structured approach to Hellenistic astrology, again, this is a great place to start. I promise you, Hellenistic is very different than what you're familiar with. And. And you're you're going to need a guided and structured approach at some point in time. I also think for people who are looking for a lineage, which means not just a bunch of information, but a practitioner specific based approach, where you get to see a practitioner work with clients. You get to hear how a practitioner has prioritized different techniques and why you're going to get a structured, spiritually grounded focus at Nightlight as well, where, if you're looking for someone who practices astrology but also values grounded, everyday spiritual practice, that's Nightlight if you want a community that's been in the industry for a long time now, this is our 16th year of teaching programs and guiding students through trainings, so all of those things, if they matter to you, this is a great place to study. It's a warm community atmosphere. It's spiritually grounded, it's focused, it's academically rigorous. It's going to provide you the appropriate preparation for practicing professionally, especially if you go through all of our programs, but also for those who are just curious and love astrology for your own personal interest, this is going to be a great place for you to learn and grow and thrive and feel like you have a lot of support around you in the curriculum, the teachers, the community, as you're developing, you know, what might just be a personal interest or spiritual hobby. So that is who it's ideal for. Finally, how you register, you go over to the website. I'm going to take you back there, and it's at the bottom of the the first year page, you're going to find that the early bird rate is in effect until October 24 you can save significantly off the cost of the course when you use the early bird rate where you can pay in full or use an early bird installment rate plan, both are going to save you off the significantly off the cost of the course. But also at Nightlight, it has always been our mission to make sure that astrological education is accessible for everyone. So please, if you are someone who would love to take this course, but maybe you could only afford a small amount of tuition per month. Use the tuition assistance it is there. We all you got to do is plot. You know, you fill out the little form. You tell us your situation, if you're on a fixed income, if you're on a limited income, if you're part time, if you're in between jobs, if you don't make a lot and you're on that fixed budget, we understand. We don't want people to hurt themselves trying to study something that is spiritual, that we feel should be very accessible for everybody. So if you're someone who could use a little help to make this program happen, you know, for whatever reason, maybe you're single parent, or you're on disability, or you're retired, you're on a fixed income, whatever the case is, use that tuition assistance. Also people in other countries who have extreme you know, what is it? Exchange rates. We get it. So just use the tuition assistance, and we'll be glad to make sure that the price point is accessible. For us as a spiritual topic, we're a business at the end of the day, but we believe that this is a spiritual topic, and so accessibility has been a part of our model for 16 years. Now we've never not had one of our training programs with affordable, sliding scale based prices for people who need it. So please take advantage of that. It's all there for you. I hope to see you in classes soon, and if you have any questions about the program whatsoever? Direct them to us at info, at Nightlight, astrology.com, and yeah, I hope to see you all coming up here in November. Take it easy, everyone. Bye.