Plato vs. Pluto? Part Three: Reading Ram Dass Birth Chart from Two Perspectives

Adam Elenbaas

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/]. I am very pleased to have my friend and colleague, Ari Moshe Wolfe, back with me today to conclude the series we've been doing. We've been looking at ancient astrology and evolutionary astrology—the techniques, the philosophies—kind of putting them side by side so we can build some meaningful bridges between these two very popular schools of astrology. This helps deepen our understanding of one another's practices and build a more ecumenical vibe in general.

 

In the astrology world, sometimes we draw lines in the sand, at least in our heads, about the particular school we come from or the particular techniques we use. This series was really inspired by Ari and I having conversations over a period of time. We’ve known each other for a long time, and we’ve noticed that sometimes traditional astrologers might look down their noses at other schools, and I’m sure evolutionary astrologers can do that too. I practice both evolutionary and traditional astrology, and Ari is a long-time evolutionary astrologer and a friend. I know him to have a very sincere spiritual approach to the work he does.

 

So, we said, let’s get together and see what we can do to illuminate these two forms of astrology in dialogue because it turns out, especially on the spiritual level, they share so much in common. In the first two episodes, if you missed them, we laid out some of the core techniques of ancient Hellenistic astrology and evolutionary astrology, especially with regard to the nodes of the moon, the treatment of Pluto, and some other really interesting things. You can look at those episodes.

 

In this episode, we're going to be focusing on a delineation of a birth chart and presenting how the different schools that we practice look at this chart. This will be the chart of Ram Dass, who is a very famous spiritual teacher. His visit to India when he was a young person—a youngish, young adult, you could say—had a tremendous impact on his life. He wrote the famous book *Be Here Now* and became an incredible ambassador for yoga and yogic spirituality and philosophy in general in the West. He was one of the great spiritual teachers of modern Western yoga, coming from India and sharing in that great tradition.

 

Because he's also someone that both Ari and I really appreciate and have drawn a lot of inspiration from, we thought we would bring his chart forth, as it’s someone we really love and respect. So, on that note, I am very glad to bring—I almost forgot—before we get into it, of course, don't forget to like and subscribe. It really helps the channel to grow. We appreciate it. You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website, NightlightAstrology.com. Check out all the cool stuff we have going on over there. We have Speaker Series talks coming up and new webinars that are posted under live events. So, check those out in particular.

 

But okay, on that note, very happy to welcome Ari back to the show. Hey, Ari.

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Hey, Adam. It's good to be back and good to finally have the time to take a look at a chart together. Looking forward to that.

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, I'm just curious, before we pop open the chart and start laying out techniques and stuff like this, I guess I have my own story of encountering Ram Dass's work. Maybe we could share a little bit about that before we just put his chart up on the screen. I feel like, to invoke him in a respectful manner, to invoke his spirit and his legacy—what does he mean to you?

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

He's one of those souls that pops up in my life at certain times, and each time he comes through, I'm just so touched by his humility. He brought forward teachings, but he never really put his ego into it. He's a soul where his own spiritual path was to just be a messenger of these universal teachings and to translate them in an accessible way. He just knew himself to be on this path of undoing. It wasn't about—and we'll talk about this with this chart—how pronounced these dynamics are. It wasn't about some kind of spiritual ego. He actually was very self-aware of these personal tendencies to be important, to be someone. So, he saw his path as embracing this role and following the guidance of his guru, but actually as a part of him learning to be an instrument and guru-dependent.

 

He has this beautiful teaching on free will, where he says, you know, he's come to recognize that everything is the grace of the guru, and that the principle of the guru can be—it's not an individual person—it's that one truth that's guiding. But even personal choices and actions are then taken, and we're led to where we're meant to go. His guru told him, before he left India, to go to the States. Ram Dass was worried that he would make a mistake, that he would hurt someone, and his guru said, "I'll make sure you do nothing wrong." He was just given that gift to live a life where he was able to rest deeper and deeper in the security and the knowing that he need not depend on his own ego, on his own limits, on his own shadow. He need not fear that, and he can trust this greater grace to guide his life.

 

I just feel like the older he got, the deeper his spirituality went. I get so much from just listening to him. It's like one of those teachers where he doesn't feel higher than us. He feels like a soul who was genuinely on his path, who really did his work, and just like a great brother, a great reflection. Yeah, that's what I always get from it.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, that was so nicely said. I will echo some of the same sentiments and feelings. I can't help but notice that as we're looking at his chart, he is in a nodal return. I notice that after people pass on, sometimes their legacy will continue to be brought up or have continuations under successive nodal returns or other transits in their chart. So, I thought, oh, that's kind of neat. It's just neat that we're sort of celebrating his life and looking at his birth chart at a time when the nodes are completing in Aries and Libra.

 

The first understanding that I had of him came through a documentary that I saw. This was back in the day—do you remember when Netflix would send you DVDs in the mail, and then you'd send them back? Yeah, yeah. So, I believe it was around that era, and I got a documentary that someone recommended to me. I knew Ram Dass wrote *Be Here Now*, but I hadn't read it. I knew that he was a famous guru, and I was just really opening myself up to yoga through ayahuasca and other spiritual teachings that were coming into my life, including astrology. I got this documentary called *Fierce Grace*, and it was about the stroke that he had. I think he might have had a couple, but anyway, he had a stroke, and the whole movie was about how he saw the stroke as graceful. He felt that it was God's grace.

 

I was so moved by that documentary. It was a perspective that, for me, was really new at that time—the idea that difficult things could be deeply healing and beneficial for us, even though they're very challenging at the same time. The way he communicated that was anything but a cliché, painting everything white and rosy. He was very real about how hard it was and how hard it was to receive the benefit or blessing of something in the form of a difficulty. That really touched me, and then I started getting into his other work. Of course, then I was just like, wow, this is really fantastic.

 

He had a way, for me, of making me feel like I had a place in yoga philosophy. At first, I kept dealing with this feeling that, like, this isn't for me. This comes from a different part of the world. I'm a white European—like, I can't. One of the things that he did a really nice job of, through his guru, was to share this with people and to make it known that you're welcome to participate in this living practice of yoga and living a lifestyle that's yogic. That was really the thing that opened the door to yoga for me. I ended up running a yoga studio with my wife for 10 years and stuff like that. But he was the one who really helped me feel welcome, like, this is for you too.

 

Of course, when I later got into bhakti in depth, I never once—and I'm sure there are some lineages that really don't like some of the cheapening that happens of yoga and the commercialization and stuff like that—but even when I was in India, I've never been anything but welcomed into the yogic tradition by Indian gurus, by students of Indian gurus. It's a very welcoming, open-arms community for yoga. I didn't know that, but Ram Dass helped me start on that path. That's cool.

 

Yeah, we have two different charts we're going to look at because Ari and I configure our charts slightly differently. Ari uses Porphyry, which is what we broadly call a quadrant-based house system, and then I use whole signs in Hellenistic. So, Ari is going to present first some of the unique techniques that evolutionary astrologers use, and Ari himself uses, obviously, as a way of looking at some of the really beautiful soul signatures of Ram Dass and the life that he lived. He has passed—I can't remember, it wasn't too long ago. I want to say it was like five years ago—my daughter was born. So, it was December 22, 2019.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Yeah, okay, wow, that's remarkable. So, it was 2019. He left his body in 2019. Ari's going to take a look at his chart and some of the unique signatures from the evolutionary standpoint in Porphyry. When he's done, I'll flip to my whole sign version, and I'll show you some of the techniques that we use in Hellenistic astrology. Then we can also ask each other some questions along the way. I think the goal here is to show everyone who's listening that there are really unique benefits to each approach, and there are unique insights and gifts that each approach has in its own way. Actually, there's something amazing too when we bring them together like this, where they offer something together that neither can do completely independently.

 

The hope is that people will be inspired to learn more—learn more about evolutionary astrology, learn more about Hellenistic astrology. Don't feel like there are invisible walls that keep you from incorporating more into your practice if it makes sense to you. So, okay, on that note, I'm going to put Ram Dass's chart up on the screen. This is so exciting. I know people have been very excited for this too, so I think this is just going to be a really nice way to look at things. Okay, here's the chart. I'm going to hand it over to Ari first. So, take us through some of the evolutionary perspective, whether it's the nodes, whether it's Pluto, and we also—I know that we didn't talk about on a technical level—squares to the nodes, which evolutionary astrology has a very particular take on. So, Ari might say something about that too. But whatever makes sense to start with, Ari, take us in.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

So, I want to say first, people ask, "Do you need to use Porphyry to practice EA?" And the answer is no. I would say EA, at its core, is an underlying philosophy, and then there's an interpretive technique and orientation to looking at the chart, which we've discussed in our previous episodes. I know evolutionary astrologers that use other house systems. This is the house system that Jeff Green used. It's what I've trained in. It works well for me, but there's no dogma around it.

 

Let me start by addressing the North Node. This is a great example of a soul who has a very strong North Node. We've talked a little bit about that—how we both kind of work with planets on the North Node. To review this, when a planet is on the North Node, you can think of it as that planetary function being a central focus for the soul's ongoing evolutionary growth. It doesn't mean necessarily that this planet is understood well. In fact, it says this is something the soul is really wanting to learn and work on and develop, and it becomes a lead point for their ongoing evolution—likely something that's been a key central figure. But it's helpful to think of it more as this is an underlying soul lesson, an area of growth that is essential for the soul's journey.

 

So, we're looking at Sun and Uranus in Aries, very tightly in a new phase with the North Node. The ruler of that is Mars in Leo in the first house. So, it's very clear there's a lot of strong, fiery energy here. You can expect that this soul's ongoing evolutionary growth is going to be very much about being a leader, stepping forward—what he has been known for. We'll bring in some of the other planets first, but just to highlight the evidence of this signature, he's always been the first to open up doors to new social paradigms.

 

Uranus corresponds to, on the one hand, where we're liberating from the precedent of the known, because Uranus always points to the unconditioned nature of our being and the unconditioned nature of reality. This means wherever we're interfacing with all the existing parameters and frameworks that are conditioned, that are known, that are familiar. So, Uranus in Aries in the 10th house is my individual purpose, and what I'm here to do in this world—my work, my role, my responsibilities. What I'm here to bring forward doesn't exist according to the attachments to the social identities, the prominence, the social importance that I've already established. What we're liberating from is "I'm important." Aries in the 10th house: "I am the top of the class, right? I'm a Harvard professor. I'm this great teacher." These are all social constructs that are actually just projections of the mind. His ongoing evolutionary growth has been to liberate from these social identities.

 

So, he has this documentary, I think, a book, *Becoming Nobody*, because such a big part of his journey, relative to this strong North Node, Uranus, Sun conjunction, is liberating from being somebody. Let's just look at his history. He grew up in a very strong Jewish, maybe upper-middle-class or upper-class environment, with a strong education. He got to Harvard, became a prominent Harvard professor, but then he pushed up against that box. He began experimenting with LSD, doing studies there with Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner, and eventually, he was kicked out of Harvard. So, Uranus-Sun—he's now like a symbol of a counterculture, but in the 10th house, right? It pushed up against the law—10th house, the rules—kicked out of Uranus, the institution—10th house. So, he's walking his own path, but then that becomes its own institution, right? That becomes its next paradigm that he then has to liberate from.

 

First, it's the Harvard scholastic, "I'm important." Then it's the "I'm the leader of a sort of renegade psychedelic movement." But that becomes another limit of identity that itself can be noticed, right? And it's like, well, that's another construct of self-importance. So, it's an ongoing evolutionary—and just to emphasize that Sun-Uranus—and you know, you can see this wherever you have your Uranus in the chart—being conjunct the Sun means it's the central point of self-actualization. We're always going to be liberating from how I've creatively actualized. I'm wanting to bring forward my essential self, my creative potential in a more pure, unconditioned way. And on the North Node, I have to keep on going, meaning it's an ongoing point of evolutionary growth.

 

So, he, you know, was drawn towards spirituality. He wanted to meet a guru. He went to India, met his guru, and all of his past, all of his identity was just totally shattered almost immediately, and he was drawn on this path of liberation. Now, one thing I want to say before I go into other aspects of the chart—you really can't look at a chart and accurately interpret it without just appreciating that each soul is at a certain level of self-realization. We're all evolving, and as we evolve, our desires, what we're wanting, will shift gradually, becoming more and more spiritualized. The gradual focus moves more and more into the desire to know who we truly are, the desire for the truth. You can look at a chart and interpret it on various levels of consciousness, but we have to appreciate, as a soul moves through stages of evolution, we have to apply our interpretation of the chart to that stage of evolution.

 

So, from a spiritual evolutionary stage, a soul who's on this journey—as many of us are—of seeking self-realization, wanting to know who I truly am, not what the world says I am, we would interpret the Sun-Uranus-North Node as liberating from the entirety of a human social identity. His guru kept him in India for a while, and he was both enthusiastic to leave but also afraid of leaving. As I mentioned, he was afraid of misleading. Ram Dass knew he had a lot of social ego—"I'm important." He had unresolved orientations towards prominence—"I'm important. I'm special," right? So, that Mars again, Leo in the first house—"Look at me, how good I am. I'm first, I'm important, I'm the leader. I'm an authority figure of this new age movement." He knew how easy it would be for power to get to his head, and so he really wanted to be firmly rooted in his unconditioned self, and that was such a strong desire for his soul.

 

Okay, so let's look at Pluto and the context of the nodes. To review, when I read a chart, I'm not going to be personally thinking of it in this linear way because it's all simultaneous. Pedagogically, it is often helpful to establish a ground in the underlying reality of Pluto, which I'll speak to and bring it into the context of the nodes. When we speak to Pluto, we're looking at the evolutionary dynamics of the soul. What does that mean? To say that we're evolving means we're all coming into incarnation with the intent and the potential to awaken to the deeper and more eternal dimension of who we are, and we do that by way of desire. We have a desire for various experiences. These desires set in motion the entirety of our human experience. Desire can't be bypassed because we all want what we want. Every single one of us desires something. It doesn't necessarily need to be fulfilled. The way Jeff Green beautifully taught it is that the evolutionary journey can be understood as the gradual exhaustion of all desires until the only remaining desire is the desire to reunite with the source or the desire to reunite with truth—to know who I truly am. But we have all kinds of desires, and this needs to be worked through. That's our evolutionary curriculum at the bottom line.

 

So, wherever we see Pluto in the natal chart points to essentially what are the kinds of desires the soul's been working through. That becomes sort of the root—the root ball, really—the bottom line of this evolutionary journey that we're experiencing in this human life. It says, on the deepest subconscious level, this is what we're most attached to, right? What we desire on a soul level that leads us into incarnation is like what we are holding onto and needing for our deepest security, and it's going to yield craving and aversion. We're going to get deeply involved and committed to life experience, but then we're also going to need to let go. So, that Plutonian process is "I desire this," and we're going to create a whole human identity built around the energetic reality of that desire nature of our very being, of our soul, right? "I'm desiring freedom to actualize the choices that I need to make in order to establish my own sense of authority and importance." Right? This Cancer Pluto in the first house—we can say very archetypally—is "I desire to have the freedom of movement to define my identity. I need to make sure I exist." That's the most existential sense. Then you look at the context of the nodes to understand how that manifested. But just to keep it very general right now, Pluto in the first house: "I need to actualize my instinctual impulses to become." So, we're going to create all kinds of experience, but then we're also going to reach the edge, right? "Okay, I'm going to do new things and become something new, and experience a new journey, and push against these obstacles. And then what? Well, there's something new that which I've desired. I can exhaust that at a certain point." So, we exhaust these desires because nothing's going to last forever. Nothing's going to provide fulfillment forever. But then we generate new desires for new experience. So, "I'm going to become a prominent professor," and that we get to the edge of that, or evolutionary dynamics say, "You're at the edge of that, you got to let go of it, but then there's something new." So, that Plutonian journey is one of ongoing exhaustion and the generation of new desires, and we have to engage that program.

 

So, now it's a human identity that is the vehicle for playing out these desires. On the soul level, desire is like an energetic vibration. When you kind of connect with it on the inside, it's just like the pure energy of wanting, right? To play it out and work through that evolutionary process, we need a human experience. So, the nodes, as well as the Moon, speak to the human identity structure that's created. So, look at this Libra South Node. This Libra South Node speaks to, on the level of human identity, right? What kind of personality? The South Node speaks to what kind of memories do we have of the past? Where have we come from, on the level of who we've been as a human, right? "I need to know that I'm loved, wanted, and secure." That's like the basic structure of Libra in the fourth house. There's an affinity towards being cared for, being liked. "I need to make sure I'm safe. Am I good with you?" Right? There's a very relational, domestic kind of dynamic, just looking at that alone.

 

Now, look at that North Node. Planets in the North Node—this isn't necessarily a new dynamic. Very often, the North Node is not like this new concept, especially when we have planets that square the nodes, which we'll address. So, let's look at the polarity of these nodes: Libra in the fourth house—"Do you love me? Are there affinities?" But also, the qualities of Libra can be very good listeners, emotionally empathic, right? Good at being emotionally present and attuned to other beings. Aries in the 10th, as I've described, is more about social prominence and actualizing one's purpose. So, it's a very strong polarity between, we can say, archetypally, the masculine and feminine energetics, right? It's about internal security, affinity with others, versus "I'm here on my own, doing my own thing in the world."

 

Now, when we have a planet squaring the nodes, especially if it's Pluto, we have to understand that that planet has been at a crux between these two ego structures, between these two identities. Jeff Green described that as a "skip step" in the sense that the nodes speak to emotional integration. You don't leave behind the South Node. You don't leave behind the South Node, but you want to be able to integrate your past experiences and how you've formed an identity and continue to explore the new experiences that are implied by the North Node. When you have a planet squaring the nodes, there's sort of a flip-flop pattern and confusion in identity between these nodal polarities.

 

So, let's just think about archetype. We'll paint a picture: Pluto in Cancer in the first house—imagine a small child that wants the freedom to separate from mommy, to go out and do their own thing. "I need the freedom," but then they're insecure. "I'm out here in the world doing my own thing, right? I'm acting like an adult now—10th house Aries—but wait a minute, I don't know where Mommy and Daddy are. Where's security? Am I loved? Am I wanted? Am I valid? Am I worthwhile? Am I important?" Boom, Libra in the fourth house—unresolved needs to feel cared for and loved, right? But then that Pluto in Cancer in the first house, relative to that Libra in the fourth house—if I'm just addicted to "Am I loved? Am I cared for? Are we good?" I'm going to feel stifled. That need for individuation and movement is going to feel entrapped and stifled because we're looking at a first house Pluto, right? So, we're going to break away from that. "Get away from me. Don't hold me, don't love me, don't care for me. I got to go and be my own person and not be entrapped by anything." So, these are unresolved dynamics within the soul coming into this lifetime.

 

Now, again, coming to the unresolved desires that Pluto is—"I have an unresolved desire for movement and for discovering who I am, my identity. Who am I? What is my—it's Cancer in the first, which is so fascinating, right? It's the archetype of Cancer in the first. It's like, 'I need to experience something new in order to be at the edge of this self-discovery. Who am I? Why am I who I am? Why do I feel? What do I want? What do I need? What makes me me, and what defines who I am, and am I okay if you think I'm okay? Am I okay if you don't think I'm okay? Do you like me?'" So, we can get the social prominence, but then kind of be stuck around, "Am I liked? Am I wanted? Am I important? Nope, I gotta make sure I'm just doing my own thing." So, the desire nature of this Pluto can really imply, on a deep, deep level, an existential anxiety of "I don't know who the hell I am," and we can get lost in the "Well, I'm important and I'm prominent," but on the internal level, "I don't know who I am, and I'm just making this up, and I'm deeply, deeply insecure."

 

So, when we work with a planet squaring the nodes, there's a particular technique, and let me just save that for a moment, right? Let me address another dimension of this chart, and then I'll bring in the technique so we don't go too far into the linear place yet. Let's just come back to Mars. Mars is the ruler of that North Node. It's also in a new phase. We work a lot with phases. Phases and aspects are not so much about "Here's the meaning of an aspect," right? A sextile means this in evolutionary astrology. We look at it as a developmental process that corresponds to where a soul is at, literally in time, meaning this Mars is separating from Pluto, which means he's playing out a new cycle of evolutionary growth. It's not conjunct; it's actually just beyond the conjunction, but it's in a new phase, and it rules that North Node. So, there's a lot of strength and significance in that Mars.

 

Just thinking of that Mars relative to its new phase with Pluto further emphasizes that anxiety. It's in the beginning of Leo, new phase, new cycle. "I have a sense of special purpose and destiny, but I don't know who I am and what I'm supposed to do with all of this energy." There can be a lot of existential anxiety with strong first house karmic dynamics, often of just like going and starting and doing something, but not really knowing where it's going. This, to me, speaks to a strong need and intent for the soul to stay in motion. But can you imagine how the soul has this deep need to stay in motion, continue to actualize, all the while on the inside not knowing who I really am? That's why it was so significant to receive this gift from his guru to say, "You're not going to make a mistake. I'm going to protect you."

 

I want to share a quick story that really exemplifies this because that Mars in that Pluto new phase is like a child that you know is going to say, "Screw you, I'm going to do my own thing," right? There's something in that signature that doesn't want to be held back, and you can't repress that. That's the point with Mars and Pluto in particular. It's like these desires and needs for freedom, or whatever the energetics are, we have to do something with it, right? And we think of Mars as sort of translating the deeper psychological dynamics and desires of Pluto into conscious choices, right? Like the soldier that's carrying out the commands of the general—the general being like the core desires of Pluto, right? The choices we make and what we do can be many things, but the question is, how are we going to consciously make choices relative to the unresolved desires that we carry within us? You gotta do something, right? Even if it's like sitting and meditating, every action, every process, is going to be some trend of mutational process. And so, especially with strong Mars energies, you can't not do something because that creates stagnation. You have to move the energy.

 

So, he was a vegetarian, predominantly for a while, but he was also very stuck on this whole, like, "I don't want to follow some kind of spiritual ego or concept of 'I'm a vegetarian. Look at me, I'm a spiritual eater.'" So, he needed to push up against that. He's like, "I'm gonna go to a restaurant that serves meat, and I'm going to make it also—because he's Jewish—as non-kosher as possible, and I'm going to eat it." And he just needed to give himself that permission to break that whole ethical purity. "I got to be this kind of person." And so, he sat there, and he still did his practice where he gave his food to his guru. Like, every action he gave it over: "I'm giving the fruits of this action to you. I'm eating this in you, for you, through you." Like, everything that he practiced was this devotional exercise of not attaching personal meaning or identity to his actions. So, even though it's like this renegade, "I'm going to break the rules," he still stayed in that devotion, right?

 

And there's this man that was watching him the whole time. So, Ram Dass is eating, and after the meal, I think this guy comes over and says, "Listen, I was watching you, and I just feel like I got to tell you—I'm a Christian preacher, evangelical, whatever, and you know, my work is to convert people, but I'm not authentic, really. I'm just trying to sleep with women, and I just looked at you, and you're just—you had this purity to you, and I just felt like I needed to meet you." And, you know, Ram Dass listened, and in the end, this Christian man said, "Tell me, what kind of diet do you eat?" Because he's projecting onto Ram Dass some kind of, like, pure—"You must eat really, you know." And it was such a beautiful gift for him to both be recognized as a devotional being that attracted the attention of this man but also to shatter all of these ethical, religious frameworks of right and wrong. So, this is, to me, an example of that need to stay in motion but through engaging the process, continuing to evolve and purify his consciousness. If he just tried to do only the right thing but repressed that need for freedom of movement, he would have a lot of unrepressed desires. This Mars-Pluto would be a hell of a lot of unresolved energy.

 

He often spoke about how he was afraid of his sexual energy. He was afraid of doing something wrong. He was honest about it, and he engaged in the life path where he didn't want to deny this fiery energetics within him. Okay, let's look at Saturn. Now, Saturn also squares the nodes. So, Saturn, in general, corresponds to both the society, culture, structural reality that we're born into, and how we're all acclimating and adopting to the structural realities of our life. So, how do we integrate ourselves within society so that we can participate in life? But also, personally, it's where we're learning to condition and strengthen our own thoughts, behaviors, consciousness orientations, so that we're creating an inner structural reality that allows us to be here in a good way. So, we all need to learn discipline. We all need to learn how to repress ourselves in appropriate ways. But then we're also inheriting a lot of social conditioning where our family, our society says, "This is right, and this is wrong." Some of those things are necessary for existing in society, like stopping at a light. But a lot of it is not useful. It's just conditioning. It's like social frameworks that are actually just repressive of who we are.

 

So, when you see Saturn in Capricorn in the seventh house squaring the nodes, obviously we're going to be dealing with strong social conditioning. This further speaks to the identity of "I'm going to be someone important so that you will like me and accept me," right? The repressed conditioning dynamics of Saturn in Capricorn in the seventh house is looking on the outside for a projection of external authority—parents, father, mother, society. "Who do I need to be to win your approval?" Right? And then you can imagine in interpersonal relationships, "Oh, I can only express myself in a certain way." I mean, a lot of core gender stuff can come up here, right? Like, as a man or as a woman, "I can only express myself in certain ways, or this is the role that I'm supposed to play." So, there's a lot of repressed, unresolved needs for external validation and approval. Again, link that with that Libra in the fourth house: "Who do I need to become? What kind of important, successful person do I need to become so that you will approve of me?"

 

And, you know, persona—a lot of people say persona is the ascendant. I think of persona as the descendant, which makes a lot of sense, but it's how we're consciously projecting ourselves out in relationship, you know? So, "I'm trying to make myself someone to be impressive or to be likable," and then linked to that 10th house, we can have a lot of, you know, "I'm showing up in relationship, but I'm not available, right? I'm an important person." Libra in the fourth house: "I'm showing up in relationship, and I'm insecure. I'm just wanting to know who you need me to be."

 

Okay, a big part of his journey was strengthening and, first, undoing—because a lot of times, we think of deconditioning as a Uranus thing. Very, very often, strong Saturn dynamics—we have to decondition the things that we've learned that are actually repressive and unnatural, and then we start to heal. It's often a therapeutic process. It takes time. We begin to develop new patterns and behaviors that are healthy, that aren't rooted in old conditioning patterns. So, he had to really become aware of that conditioning. So, this South Node is ruled by Venus in Pisces in the ninth house, and it squares the Moon. So, his soul's been always drawn towards expansiveness, towards universality, towards greater philosophical ideas, wanting to establish relationships rooted in a deeper spiritual devotion and interest. But we can also highlight Neptune in Pisces in the ninth house squaring the Sagittarius Moon in the fifth house. The significance of meeting his guru as that further helped him to heal these insecurity dynamics of this Libra in the fourth house.

 

So, he meets his guru, and the first experience he was out there under the stars, thinking of his mother, missing his mother, who recently passed. He meets his guru, and his guru says, "You're thinking about your mother." And I don't remember the exact story, but he told how his guru—he felt—saw right through him, saw everything he's ever done, all of his fears, neuroses, all of his secrets, all of his insecurities, but he still loved him. And there's something that softened. Saturn's often a softening. There's something that softened where he realized he didn't have to protect himself in this "I'm someone important." He realized with his guru, he couldn't hide. And so, he began walking this path in life where he learned how to be himself, not where that self-identity was something that others would approve of, but where he actually learned how to be who he is.

 

And Saturn is very developmental, and so he actually got more and more into—I mean, he was a psychologist, right? So, that's a role that he was playing. But as he grew, he learned to play the role for other people, where he could listen to other people, love them, hear them, and point them back to their true nature. He set up a foundation that focused on living and dying and working with people that were in transition—living, leaving their current life—right, in hospice care, and helping people with the transition. So much of what he did was about listening to people, really meeting their humanity, and dropping all of the constructs, all of the artifice. And if I was looking at a chart, you know, and just kind of counseling someone, and I would see Saturn, I would say, "Oh, yeah. I mean, it would actually be really relevant for you to be walking a path in this lifetime as a counselor, where you can counsel people but actually help them find healing and acceptance where there has otherwise been harshness and judgment."

 

So, one more piece on the Saturn. He also reconnected with his Judaism, right? The ancestry, that which you've inherited, is a Saturn thing, and he came to terms with his own inheritance from Judaism and how he was able to connect with that personally much later in his life, which also had a really strong impact on his soul. Okay, so you can look at all these dynamics, and I can go on with Jupiter in Cancer in the 12th house, which speaks a lot to that deeper, like, "I want to find home in greater meaning, greater truth." And meeting his guru and his total devotion to being at home, being unconditionally loved by his teacher, is also reflected in that. There are many stories where he's needed to be disillusioned—12th house—by way of getting confused around spiritual ideas and teachers that he's learned from along his journey. And I won't go on and on about this, so I think this provides sort of a basic framework for understanding the core soul dynamics of this soul, looking at the chart from an EA perspective. I'm very excited to hear what you have to share, Adam, and then maybe we can have a little bit of dialog after you've spoken your piece, too.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, that was so inspiring. Thank you. I really enjoyed watching you just weave the evolutionary dynamics together through the nodes, through the squares to the nodes. That was really cool. And what I love—what I think people will find is complementary about these two approaches—is that I feel like EA provides such rich context spiritually for the question of what our spiritual growth is about in a lifetime. And I really—although I feel like ancient astrology has a ton of amazing things available to it—I still see myself creating that context for my clients because of the background that I have in EA. So, anyway, let me share one thing, just commenting on that briefly.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned that because I just want to emphasize that when I would look at this chart or any chart, my bottom line internal inquiry is, "Where is the invitation for evolution for this soul?" Yeah, and it's meeting an individual where they're at on their evolutionary journey and seeing the chart as a statement of ongoing evolutionary growth. That's the bottom line.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, absolutely. Let me—okay, so here's the whole sign house version that I work with, and they're pretty similar for the most part. We see a lot of the same house placements—Saturn in the seventh, Sun-Uranus in the 10th, and so on. I'm not going to take out the outer planets because I do work with them. Some ancient traditional astrologers do not, and a lot of Vedic astrologers who do not use the outer planets as well. But they're a part of my practice. In my first-year program, we don't use them just so people can get a traditional view of the chart and work with those dynamics kind of in a vacuum. And then, in year two, we bring them back. So, anyway, I'm going to keep them in, but what I want to focus on is what I would say is one of the great strengths of Hellenistic astrology—and in Vedic astrology too—is like this karmic analytics. So, I don't feel like it is as strong in providing that kind of context. Really, the artfulness of the practitioner, and I think their own spiritual practice and their own consciousness, is what helps to create that context from a Hellenistic standpoint. So, it's something that people might really enjoy about studying more of EA—that you have some approaches that can help you with that. In Hellenistic, here's what I want to—I'm just going to give some examples of what Hellenistic is good at doing.

 

So, let's start. Let's just say that someone—you know, a soul is coming, and often souls have particular inquiries, and let's say that one of them would be health. So, one of the strong points of a Hellenistic approach, which is very mundane, right? And like health is about the health of the body, and most of the time when people ask about health, they mean like, "My physical health," right? So, in Hellenistic, we have a way of assigning signifiers that will help us determine which planet is going to most consistently represent the health of the soul in the body, and then transits to that planet will usually become the most reliable, or predictably reliable, for forecasting events around health. And I give an example of this.

 

So, in ancient astrology, the Moon would be used as the ascendant ruler, alongside perhaps planets in the first house, like Jupiter, could be a part of it. Sometimes the Sun and Moon, both as luminaries, will be involved with health. But let's just take the sixth house Moon. I think we can make a really interesting connection, by the way, with the fact that Pluto is on the ascendant, which, from the traditional view, might also be said to indicate that some of the most important spiritual transformations could also come alongside health emergencies, for example, where there's a kind of a crisis and a healing—a healing crisis on the level of the body. But we see the Moon in the sixth house in Hellenistic astrology—this is a tough place for the ascendant ruler because the sixth house is going to be associated with disease and sickness.

 

What's really interesting about this is he has a mutual reception in his chart between an exalted Jupiter in the first house and the Moon in Jupiter's sign of Sagittarius in the sixth. So, these two planets are actually working together in his chart. What also makes this really interesting is that while we see difficulty for health in the sixth house, the mutual reception with Jupiter in the first means that some kind of grace or beneficence will tend to manifest out of the challenges that he faces on the level of health. And what's even more cool is that Jupiter is also his ninth house ruler, which is the house of the guru, and the house of gurus, teachers, spirituality, higher wisdom, things like that. So, there's this really interesting connection in his life path between illness, spiritual wisdom, and a kind of grace. And I was mentioning earlier that he—this documentary that he talked about called *Fierce Grace*, where he had a stroke, and he ended up seeing it as one of the most beneficial transformation points in his life, and really like a tremendous spiritual blessing. That's how we would read a Moon-Jupiter mutual reception, in this case, with Jupiter exalted in the first and also ruling the ninth and so forth.

 

Now, it becomes—I'm going to pull up a bi-wheel so that I can show a transit. So, I'm going to just—here we go. So, okay, so I want to go to the stroke that he had that was a part of that documentary. He had the stroke on February 19, 1997. So, let me just go forward just a little bit here. So, what we can see is a couple of things from a traditional standpoint. And not everyone listening to this may be familiar with all these techniques. I'm not going to explain every single one of them, but in this year of his life, he was in a sixth house perfection year. So, we talk about perfections. We're talking about annually rotating the ascendant through the signs so that a new whole sign house becomes the ascendant ruler for the year. So, this is a year in which his ascendant being perfected lands in the sixth house, so we know that things around his identity, his health, are going to come together in the sixth house, which is obviously a place that can be quite challenging. That also makes Jupiter the perfection ruler of the year.

 

So, what we see—so, yeah, so one of the things that's really remarkable about this period of time is that at the time that he has the stroke, we see Pluto right on his Moon in the sixth house, and that's what we would anticipate from the Hellenistic perspective. We can use outer planets too. The traditional perspective, for example, might really pay close attention to a fallen Saturn trining his Moon, for example, and some other—there's some other ways we could look at it as well. But the other thing that's remarkable is—so, he's got Pluto on his Moon, which is the planet that we would anticipate representing his health, but not only that, in the sixth house, those transits, in particular, to the Moon, will typically manifest in ways that are a little bit more challenging. Now, that doesn't mean I would say, "I predict you're going to have a stroke," or if I was with a client, I would probably just—and they were asking about their health, I would say something like, "This might be a challenging year where there's some opportunities for a lot of spiritual growth by means of how you handle some of the frustrations or difficulties that come up," or something like that, because I certainly don't have the power to see such specifics. But another thing that's really fascinating is that we have Jupiter and Uranus conjoining in the eighth house in an opposition to his natal Mars at the same time. That's a really fascinating connection as well.

 

So, when I look again from the Hellenistic standpoint, there are—Jupiter is his perfection lord of the year. So, in a perfection year, whenever the ruler of the year is going through anything quite intense, that's also going to be a trigger for the karma of that house. So, in a sixth house year, when Jupiter is the perfection ruler of the year, and it's conjoining Uranus in the eighth house, right, and then we also see Pluto over the Moon—that's a manifestation of a very challenging event. But we have that mutual reception in his chart between the Moon and Jupiter, and one of the ways in which that manifests is this becomes, for him, a really pivotal turning point in the development of his spiritual life, in the evolution of his life as a teacher. And he considers it, in that documentary again, to have been one of the biggest blessings of his life. So, there's that really beautiful connection between the Moon and Jupiter speaking.

 

And so, I just wanted to mention that right, because it's a good way—the ancient approach, like the Vedic approach, is going to have really targeted ways of knowing when specific types of themes and topics are going to manifest. But you see how this, without context, is like, "Well, unless you're going to provide some meaningful psychological and spiritual counseling around it, it could actually scare someone, you know, or if it's not used in the right way or sensitively, could actually be a deterrent to someone growing spiritually because they're just going to develop a bunch of anxiety." Which is why I actually think that sensitive—what I would consider like really good Hellenistic astrologers, or even Vedic astrologers, what they're doing is not dissimilar from what Ari is talking about when he says, "You have to have a—at least I understood what you were saying, Ari—that you have to have a little bit of a felt sense for where a soul is at in its evolutionary journey." And that's going to impact how you—when you describe certain kinds of karmic fields or events that a soul might be about to go through, because it's like, in one case, you could scare someone. In another case, you could help someone prepare and be ready to extract deep spiritual value out of something. So, that's one example that I wanted to give. But can I—is that the question? Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean—

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

So, I'm noticing—so, Jupiter, as a sixth house ruler, is being squared by Saturn. You said Saturn's in its fall—

 

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, so in its fall in Aries. Oh, we have it—it's Aries. And so, it's sextiling. Oh, you're talking about squaring his Jupiter, yes, yeah.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

And it's on—and remind me, you said planets on the South Node is bad with a good one, good with a bad one, right? Or that was—

 

Adam Elenbaas

This—no, so the South Node here would be curbing the maleficence of Saturn squaring his planet in the first house, which would also be very helpful for having a kind of near-fatal-but-you-live kind of experience. Cool. Yeah, isn't that neat how that works? It's another way of saying it would be that there's something—the South Node in Saturn has the potential to crystallize insights without harming you or something like that. So, that's just a beautiful way of looking at it, too. But so, there's a few other examples. So, in 2008—I'm going to jump forward because I've got a bunch of them, but for the sake of time, we'll just jump forward to another example. So, in 2008—

 

Adam Elenbaas

In November—okay, let me go forward to November. Okay, so he had a fall in this month that led to hip replacement surgery, and he was again in a sixth house perfection year. And Jupiter was the ruler of the year and in its fall, conjoining Saturn, which in medical astrology could be associated with things like your bones. I think it's interesting that the ruler of the year is literally in its fall on Saturn, and he falls and breaks a bone. But the other thing that's really important this month is you can see that Mars is coming over his Moon. So, he's got a couple of transits. Again, he's in a sixth house perfection year. Ruler Jupiter is in its fall conjunct Saturn, and Mars is conjoining the sixth house Moon. These are just little examples that I'm trying to draw on—when you see a difficult karmic placement, right? But how do you time out when that particular karma will manifest? And it's typically when it's getting triggered by things that are difficult, because a Jupiter transit over the Moon is not going to be the same as a Mars transit in Hellenistic astrology and stuff like that. So, there's another one that's really powerful. I want to show just on the level of health, just to show the diversity of the approaches. In 2019—this is in July, just before he passed. Oops, let's go back to July. So, on July 2, there was a solar eclipse right on that Jupiter. And so, in Hellenistic astrology, typically eclipses—their effects will play out through the remainder of a perfection year, or through the remainder of—like, in modern astrology, what might be like a solar return year or something like that. So, a solar eclipse has the power to—whatever it affects, it's not typically just on the day of the eclipse, right? It's going to have like a window of time in which the effects of the eclipse on the planet manifest. So, just months prior to his passing, while—by the way, he's in a year in which Jupiter's over his Moon too. Yeah, this is a really beautiful symbol of someone leaving their body in a very beautiful, benefic way, where the exalted benefic in the first house receives the eclipse. And that would—any planet in the first house in Hellenistic is going to convey—talking about the body and the physical health on at least one level. It can talk about identity and psychology on another level. But the eclipsing of that exalted Jupiter, while transiting Jupiter is also co-present with his Moon that year, is just a fantastic symbol of a guru leaving his body, right? It's just kind of a beautiful way of encapsulating some of it.

 

So, I wanted to bring that up. And also, I thought it was interesting that during that period of time—I mean, another thing that you can see in the air is that he's got—he's in a Saturn Return too, just, you know, just can't help but notice some of the other little details. And there's a lot of ways you could end up looking at his passing in a chart, but in Hellenistic, one of the reliable ways in which we look at major health events, whether it's death or a fall or whatever, will be to planets in the first or the ruler of the first. So, that's the first example. Let me go to—I've got—did you have a question? No.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

What perfection year was this? Was this also—

 

Adam Elenbaas

A sixth house? It was the last year of his life. He was born in April. So, how old did he live to be? 80-something? Let's—

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Yeah, I mean, he would have been at that point.

 

Adam Elenbaas

He was 88. Yeah, so 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84—he would have been, I think it looks like a fifth house perfection year. Okay, Mars would have been the ruler. And it's interesting that he was in a Mars return at the same time of the eclipse. That's fascinating—almost like a moment. It feels like a moment of completing your mission, you know? It's—

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Just so beautiful that this was during his Saturn Return. It's—and again, another Saturn-South Node moment, yeah, good point.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Regular stroke, which was like a key turning point in his life—one of those few essential turning points in his life, right? The hard work thing, meeting his guru, the stroke, and then dying—and then Saturn was so prominent. Yeah, yeah.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Let me go back in time and show another example—a different topical approach. So, let's say that someone comes in to a Hellenistic astrologer and they say, "Gosh, I would really like to know more about relationships, my—you know, maybe my sexuality, things like that." So, we would look typically to three planets: the ruler of the seventh house, planets in the seventh house, or Venus. Any of those are sort of like your first level of analysis. So, he has Saturn in the seventh house. And Ari, I loved how you were looking at that seventh house Saturn because I think it conveys to this exact same—there are similar themes at play here. But it was so—we would look to that. And then, aside from what I might analyze natally with respect to Saturn in the seventh house, which for me would include things like a tendency toward conventionality in relationships, but also maybe that conventionality becomes something that needs to be looked at or even overcome, right? Like, the conventional, safe, structured, traditional relationship. And Saturn, in ancient astrology, because Saturn was a threshold planet and it was the ruler of the opposition, it was associated with things that were both popular—for example, it rules popularity—and it's also about outcasts and people who don't fit in. So, Saturn could indicate someone who is establishment, status quo, corporate, but it could also represent a punk rocker. And this was one of the ways in which Saturn, for example, before Uranus and the assignment of Uranus to Aquarius, would be associated with things Aquarian because it split the boundary between the realm of the gods in the inner spheres and the realm of the ether—the thoughts in the mind of God, this numinous, intangible, invisible realm of divinity that lay beyond Saturn. And so, Saturn is associated with things like hermits and people who live in monasteries and in seclusion and away from the world, as well as people who are at the top of the hierarchy within the world, which is a very interesting dichotomy that Saturn straddled in ancient astrology.

 

So, when I see that in a seventh house, I might say these kinds of dualities might be really challenging at different times. And, like you said, and the same thing I was going to mention, he talked about his sexual energy being like, "This is a live wire, you know." So, in January of 1994—as I can't—I mean, look at this. This is so cool. Neptune and Uranus are going over this natal Saturn. Can you see that right there? And he opened up about being bisexual in *Gay Soul Magazine*. And the other thing that's really fascinating is that in this month, Venus actually conjoins his natal Saturn as well. So, I mean, all of these planets are transiting over his natal Saturn, but especially—he ends up getting—I mean, this is what is really remarkable. If you go forward just some days and you bring Venus through the mix of this, you actually get Venus cazimi at the heart of the Sun, going through her sort of moment of rebirth, right on natal Saturn, with all of these planets transiting right over it in the month that he comes out with his bisexuality. And he talked specifically about the need to be honest about these things, despite what people might think about him as a spiritual teacher, and he was very vulnerable, and I thought very humble, and it just fits exactly with the way you were describing Saturn from an evolutionary point of view as well.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Was that the first time he came out about being bisexual?

 

Adam Elenbaas

I don't know if that was the first time he came out, but he opened up about it in the first publication during that month, which was *Gay Soul Magazine*. So, he may have come out earlier, and maybe some people knew or he had shared it at earlier points, but this was the first like mass public sharing of it, from what I understood looking around online. And then, when it comes to how—if I were to say, the seventh house is also associated with how your relationships with other human souls go in general, and Saturn there can also be about, like you said, "I want to be known, respected, taken seriously by other people," kind of Saturn in Capricorn. And then, are there things that might really shift that? Well, I love this transit too for something that begins the process of him shedding a level of conventionality in human relationships in general. And this is, of course, a time that Ari mentioned earlier, which is when he meets his guru. So, he's in a 12th house perfection year that year with Mercury as the ruler. And Mercury was cazimi, just like Venus was at the time that he came out publicly. Now, Mercury, ruler of a 12th house perfection year, is at the heart of the Sun, right over his Saturn when he meets Neem Karoli Baba Maharaj. The reason that I think that's really cool is because this would be a moment in which someone could speak to things in him that needed to be broken open around his social identity. And I just love that at the time that he meets him, he's got a Mercury cazimi happening in a very similar spot to where the Venus cazimi takes place when he comes out, and it's happening again right over that Saturn.

 

The other thing that becomes really interesting is that this was literally just—just whoops, here we go—just days after meeting him, right? He's got Jupiter in Cancer retrograding back into his first house for a Jupiter return. I also love that Saturn is transiting his midheaven around the same time. There's just so many symbols that are all popping at once, suggesting this is a really important person that's going to completely deconstruct your social identity—Saturn in the seventh house, you know? So, from the standpoint of Hellenistic, again, that deeper context is really dependent upon the sensitivity of the astrologer. But the piece that we would anticipate—that strong transits around Saturn would manifest along the themes and topics that we mentioned. So, we look at those periods to be archetypally significant for the themes and topics represented.

 

So, ancient astrology is very good at the karmic analytics—like, this point, this point. Now, there's just one more that I'm going to share, and then I will be done with my piece. So, the obvious planet that we would look at for career, fame, occupation is going to be planets in the 10th house, the ruler of the 10th house, sometimes the Sun. We have the Sun exalted in the 10th house with the North Node, with Uranus. So, the Sun becomes a very obvious candidate for important developments in professional life or career. So, again, when we're analyzing periods of time that could be significant for that part of his life karmically, we're going to look to important transits to that point. So, if I go forward here, this is March—we're going to go to March of 1971, and it was in March of 1971 that *Be Here Now* was published. And of course, that is like the first that would really launch his career—long-standing career as a spiritual teacher, writer, author, speaker. So, where am I? Yes, okay, here we go. So, what I love about this is that using outer planets, we're in a Sun-Uranus opposition to the Sun, and that really does convey along the evolutionary lines that Ari was talking about with respect to, "I am going to blaze a new trail, and it's going to be as a spiritual teacher in this very different role from, say, the Harvard professor mode that I was in in an earlier phase." And so, you see that Uranus opposition to the Sun—we would anticipate any major transits around the Sun will convey in terms of major events in the career, but with an exalted Sun, we would typically expect that those events would either have a really strong, inceptional Aries quality—like very entrepreneurial or pioneering, something very strongly Mars-like would occur that would be very bright and visible in lifetime, starting something new would be one of them, or in the 10th house with an exalted Aries Sun, you might think of something that brings more notoriety or fame or greater rank or authority. Now, that's relative too. It doesn't mean everyone who has an exalted Sun in Aries will be famous, but it would be pretty standard to see good major transits to that exalted Sun resulting in favorable things like promotion, for example. So, this is obviously a big step up for him and his career. I love that Uranus is again playing a role because it fits the evolutionary view perfectly.

 

And then, the other thing that's really neat that I love about this is he's got—he's got Jupiter and Neptune coming right over his Moon. And I think that one of the things that indicates—and this is something that I had to dig to find—the year that this came out, apparently, in many private conversations with people that were close to him, he talked about having this deep discomfort with the projections that he was receiving from people after his book was published because it was a rapid rise in fame. And I think it's fascinating that he felt personally that year, like emotionally, there was some overwhelm, and there was a feeling of being suddenly more responsible for more than he had imagined. And there was a piece of it that was somewhat challenging and overwhelming. I think that's got to be a part of just some of the evolutionary signatures we were looking at. And also, when you have a Moon in the sixth house, and it's got a trine to the Sun, that when something solar happens in his chart, there's a good feeling that it might come with a lot of sacrifice and also a kind of hardship. There's a little bit of a cross you might bear when the Moon's configured to the Sun like this. It's your ascendant ruler. The Sun's like glowing up there in the 10th house, but the Moon may feel a little bit more troubled or burdened by what comes with it. And that's an interesting way in which we can read the sort of facial dynamic between the Sun and Moon, their houses here. And I just thought it was interesting that this is the year in which Neptune's going over the Moon, and he reported feeling really overwhelmed by the rapid rise in fame.

 

So, those are a few approaches. I'll leave it there so we can just have a little bit of discussion before Ari has to go. But again, I think just reiterating that what we're doing mostly in Hellenistic is combining things like perfection years, rulers of the years, transits to certain points that we know are probably going to represent certain topics and themes, and we're using that as a kind of karmic analytics. But what I love about EA, and what really is still with me from EA, is that unless we create a deeper context for those things, what good is it? What good is it to be able to predict that this topic and theme will come up unless we can give it spiritual context and deeper evolutionary significance?

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Beautiful. In your last chart, I was thinking too—the discomfort with all the attention he was getting—that Jupiter-Neptune conjunction on his Moon, also squaring his natal Venus in Pisces. Oh yeah, Neptune, right. I'm saying Venus in Pisces in the ninth house can be a lot of projections of "You're the guru," like people looking up to you. Just adding that dimension too. And then I would guess, based on what you share, which is so interesting to see how you're correlating that the Venus rising into an evening star with him coming out in the magazine as bisexual, I would be so curious to find out what that meant for him. Because, like, from what you shared, I would be like, "Okay, that's like a personal sense of 'I'm coming back into my sense of self. I'm coming back into my power, into my own self-confidence, into my own self-trust.'" So, I had that curiosity to hear more about what it meant for him to be writing about that. I imagine, I suspect that would have felt very much like, "I feel more secure in myself now," kind of, yeah.

 

Adam Elenbaas

The interview is still available. You can read it online. From what was it? What was the name of it? Was called the publication—*Gay Soul Magazine*. And I didn't read the whole thing. I have read it in the past, but one of the things he conveys is that at one point in time when he was well known—I think this was like back in the 70s or 80s—someone saw him in line at—it was either a gay bar or a gay movie theater or something like that, and someone recognized him, and he had a wave of like shame or guilt come over him. And then he realized that it was important that someone saw him with no shame connected to his humanity, and because his humanity is a part of the spiritual journey of life. And so, he just like waved and said hello and was really kind or whatever. And I think it's similar to the situation you described in the restaurant. I think that's a core part of what made him—yeah, so cool. So, yeah, I feel like maybe what we could do is just end with just a brief few things that we've taken away from this. Sure, I'll start. I feel like one of the things that is inspiring to me about this is I'm realizing, the more that we've gone through this series, that the capacity that I have to make sure that spiritual and evolutionary context is there, even though I'm not using EA techniques, really does come from the fact that the first three, four years of my practice, I was mostly inspired by EA. And without that, I think the amazing predictive capacity of ancient astrology isn't as rich as it could be. And so, this series has really helped me realize that my lineage is diverse—it's more diverse than I think it is, you know? And so, that's my big takeaway from this, and that's been a really a blessing, honestly. And it's been really nice to work with you on this.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

What I'm taking away, and this is something that I've appreciated about our dialogs in general, is what the Hellenistic and also Vedic approach offers, which I lack to a significant degree, is that more nuanced, mundane—I like karmic and karmic intelligence—

 

Adam Elenbaas

Analytics. Yeah.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Karmic. It's a WordPress app plugin—that specific dimension, because I think it's very easy to regard the spiritual journey from a strictly psychological level and look like, "What are the core dynamics?" And of course, that's the bottom line, but there's something that celebrates and honors and respects the fact that there are specific plants and conditions and structure and templates that we can track in time, like you were saying, like, maybe you won't be able to specifically say there's going to be a stroke here, but you can look at what's happening in the sixth house perfection year, and what's aspecting the ruler, the transiting ruler of that house, and what's aspecting the ruler, the ruler, the natal ruler of that—I mean, just like it's so fascinating, the specificity with which you're able to identify specific phases of life experience and even events. And I think honoring the word—honoring, respect is what arises for me, because it's just recognizing everything that happens in this life journey is relevant for our ongoing growth. And if we're able to predict otherwise mundane events, those mundane events must be important. Everything is a part of the journey. So, bringing the two together and having the skill set for both, I think, is an incredibly valuable—for those that are called to it, it's an incredibly valuable thing to be able to cultivate.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, and I think we should add that there's some people who may have skill or interest in one school or another, and for some, it might be too much to juggle to try to incorporate too many schools. That's okay, too. But at the very least, series like this can leave our heart doors open for each other, you know, and see each other with more compassionate eyes that are less sort of tribal in the negative sense, where it's like, "Hey, we're less detrimental."

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

That it has to be one. I mean, like, I'm probably not going to go into a deep dive of studying and learn things that you know, but there's medicine in it, and if I need to take that medicine, I know where to look.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, exactly. And they're gonna—because they're gonna be people who are hearing this too, who really may find value in, "Oh, like, I could use a transit forecast for some specific thing," or, "Wow, I'd really like to know what Pluto and the nodes are saying in my chart and get that context that EA can elucidate." Like, so knowing what's out there, and knowing kind of just getting a feel for them in an open way—that's not about which one is better, right? We're so quick to say, if something isn't my style, then it's trash. You know, I've just noticed that it's a—I think it's a product of a lot of us bantering constantly on social media. But there's a more nuanced, patient, curious, and humble approach that we should take toward each other's crafts. And I feel like we really accomplished that. And let's leave the door open to doing more in the future.

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

Be great. Yeah, just had a thought, actually. I mean, just with what you said, how easy it is to trash other views. I mean, there are trends that are coming up, like Jupiter squaring the nodes soon in Pisces-Virgo, there's things like that—I would be fascinated to have a conversation, yeah, for having me interpret that and just continuing this dialog where these different schools of thought can come together in this way.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Well, maybe the next thing to do is along the lines of interesting major transits like Saturn-Neptune, you know, or whatever—like Jupiter in Cancer, or whatever the case might be. Let's lay out some of the mundane levels and evolutionary levels, and like compare notes, and we can do some joint forecasts or something. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. Ari, I know, has to go because he's got a class he's teaching. I want to tell you where you can find Ari's work. Of course, you've been listening to Ari Moshe Wolfe. You can find him at arimoshe.com and his YouTube channel, where Ari produces regular content—wonderful, soul-enriching content—is Heart and Soul Centered Astrology. I hope you will check his work out there. Ari, is there anything else you have coming up that you want to tell people about?

 

Ari Moshe Wolfe

By the time this video is released, I will have opened enrollment for my first-year 2025 training program. So, we begin very end of March, early April. We go through all the basics of evolutionary astrology—the science, planets, archetypes—then we go into chart interpretation, and then we end with transits and progressions and a lot of practice. So, you can check all that out on the website. A whole new cohort begins in just a couple of months.

 

Adam Elenbaas

Yeah, awesome. I couldn't recommend it more highly for those of you who are interested in evolutionary astrology. Ari, thank you for being here, and let's talk again soon. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Bye.