The Astrology of March 2023: Featuring Saturn and Pluto Changing Signs!

NHey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are going to be taking a look at the major astrological transits of the month of March 2023 was kind of a special episode today with Saturn changing signs into Pisces and Pluto moving into the sign of Aquarius. We are going to focus exclusively on those two transits today, and we will be looking at some of the rest of the transits of the month on another day this week.

I figured we might as well devote some serious focus time to these two transits, which are arguably some of the biggest transits of 2023. At least most of my friends and colleagues who are astrologers have this month circled as, like, the month with lots of things to talk about. So we'll be looking at those two transits, and I will be joined by my dear friend and colleague Shawn Nygaard, who is an astrologer here in Minneapolis, one of my dear friends and a regular in the Nightlight Speaker Series, a regular guest teacher in my programs, and stuff like that. So really glad to have Shawn here, and I will introduce him in a minute. And we will also be talking about a new podcast that he has out, which I'm really excited to share with you guys because I think that all of you who like my show would really enjoy the new program that he's put together. So we'll be talking about that as well.

But before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe today. Share your comments in the comment section; we would love to hear from you and hear your reflections on these two major transits that we have coming up. You can find a transcript of any of my daily talks if you prefer to read what has been spoken on the YouTube channel. You can read the transcripts every day at nightlightastrology.com at the blog. If you have a story to share in the month of March with respect to the entrance of Saturn into Pisces or Pluto into Aquarius, don't forget to use the hashtag grabbed or email us grabbed nightlight astrology.com. With your stories, we aggregate those and put together some storytelling episodes, as you guys know. And these are big transits. So we'd really love to do some stories devoted to the ingress of these planets. If you have them again, use the hashtag grabbed and put in the comment section tell us the transit tell us your story.

Don't share anything that you don't want to be shared in a potential storytelling episode. Of course, we don't use anybody's names. Or you can email us if you prefer to be a little bit more anonymous, grabbed@nightlight astrology.com. Use the hashtag grabbed because one of the names for the planets in ancient Indian astrology was the planets were called grahas, which means grabbers. And it's funny how they will show up, and just kind of grab us.

And it's also a shout-out to a quote that I love that James Hillman liked to use that came from Auden, which is that we are lived by powers we pretend to understand; they show up, and they just see us sometimes. And when they do, it's really fun to reflect on the way that they show up in our life stories and can learn a lot of good astrology from sharing these stories and reflect and learn a lot of things about life too. So we love this series, and hopefully, you'll share your stories with us in the month ahead with a lot of big transits coming up. Well, on that note, I'm really excited to have my buddy Shawn on the show today. So Shawn, welcome in. Glad to have you here.

Shawn Nygaard
Hey, Adam; good to see you. Good to be here. Thank you for having me today.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, totally. I'm really excited to have you here. Obviously, for people who don't know, Shawn is a fantastic archetypal astrologer. And someone who's been working with archetypes in astrology for many years. Shawn lives here in Minneapolis, right near me. And we get together regularly and have dinner and go out to the movies, which often become opportunities for us to reflect on various planets and transits and archetypes and things like that. And I've also managed to drag Shawn to some sporting events. So I like to drag him to the Twins games, which, actually, if you don't know, baseball games are like one of the most mellow sports environments where you could really just get lost in conversation for several hours while also taking in games. So one of my favorite things from last summer was Shawn and I would go to the games, and we would sit and talk astrology and charts and archetypes and all the while turning our attention occasionally to watch baseball players playing baseball, which was really fun.

So anyway, I'm really glad to have you here to talk about the astrology of March, which includes two major planetary ingresses, Saturn into Pisces and Pluto into Aquarius. You've given talks on both of these subjects for my students in the speaker series, which have been fantastic. People have absolutely loved them. But before we get into that, I want to share with everybody the latest project that you've been working on, which is a new podcast series. The podcast is called Imagine That. And I'm going to just show you a little screenshot of it, and I want Shawn to tell us about this series and sort of the inspiration behind it. Here it is. Imagine That: Astrology and Archetypes, the podcast hosted by Shawn Nygaard.

If you don't know Shawn's work, this is a great place to start if you haven't seen him in the speaker series or if you haven't gotten to know his work already. I cannot recommend this highly enough in terms of just very high quality astrological work, and Shawn has a really well-trained symbolic eye. And I'm always learning something new every time I hang out with him. So I can't recommend this highly enough. But Shawn, tell us about your new podcast, the inspiration behind it, and what it's all about.

Shawn Nygaard
Oh, cool. That's, that's a lot. And first of all, I have to second the baseball thing, because that was really fun. I love going to baseball now, which I am now apparently saying on the record. But yeah, I do want to say thank you for having me. And the people who have attended the webinars that I do at the speaker series have been so gracious, and the response has been so good to them; it's just been a big help for me to have that support. And when I was thinking about doing a podcast because I've been thinking about it for quite a while, I also had to wait to kind of like, when does it feel right to do this, but one of the things was, I, because I like literature.

One of my favorite authors is Olga Tokarczuk, the Polish author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018. And in her Nobel lecture, she was, talking about the culture, and she referred to kind of one of the aspects of the culture right now as a chorus of soloists only vying for attention and all that, and I just, for a long time, I was like, what, I completely agree with that. And I don't know that I want to sing in that choir. And then eventually, I just decided, because of these big transits that are starting next month, with Saturn in Pisces and Pluto in Aquarius, I just thought, what, I am joining the choir, I am going to contribute to that. And so you have Imagine That, which my website is Imagine astrology. So this is kind of a companion title to that. But it's also; people don't know this. But years ago, I did a little internet radio show. And it was called Imagine That. And it was about astrology and archetypes. So I just thought, why don't I reinvent that in 2023? And this artwork looks so much better than the old version from years ago. And I'm just pleased to kick it off and get it going and see what we can do with it.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, well, I'm gonna tell people how to find the link to the podcast in a minute and take people over to your website where they can listen to the first episode. But what is the mission behind Imagine That, I mean, if you maybe wouldn't call it a mission, but like, what, what are you hoping to share or look at? What can people expect when they tune into an episode?

Shawn Nygaard
Anything goes, to be honest; I'm planning it as I go, which is part of the process for me. But I, you've already quoted James Hillman quoting Auden. But there's, there's a line that I remember reading and one of Hillman's essays. And I know the context, but that's not important right now. He just said the neurotic foreground obscures the archetypal background. And if you look at social media, now, if you watch the news, if you walk outside, there's a sense that things are kind of neurotic, things are kind of like tense. And there's so much going on in the culture that I feel, and I've noticed that that archetypal background is getting obscured. And so I wanted to just have a place where I can just kind of do my own thing, have this playground to kind of create and form; however, I want it to go aligned with the astrology, and also not, but just to be able to talk from the background into the foreground. And there's always the archetypal background; there's never not an archetypal background, and it gets obscured. So I just kind of wanted to wash the windows so that it's less obscured.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I feel like one thing that our creative content shares and comment after listening to your first episode, which by the way, is called The Old Man and the Sea-goat. And is about the completion of Pluto's journey through Capricorn, and you guys who like my channel will love it. So what I wanted to say about it was that people who like my content usually comment that they like it because one of the things that we do is we look at all the transits week by week, and a lot of the content is geared toward just Looking at the multivalence of the archetypal combinations like what's going on with like, this week we've looked at Venus and Jupiter in Aries coming together, we've looked at Mercury and Saturn coming together and Aquarius, and we'll just turn that planetary combination, so many different ways, so that people can start to recognize as you were saying, What would say the same thing recognize the archetypal background.

And some, if you're able to recognize it, I think what I take from what you're saying is that you can, you can, you can save yourself in some ways from the neurotic foreground, you can remember, some greater imaginal landscape that exists, and in my experience, it has a healing effect. If it feels good, it feels great to take yourself to take the drama and place it back into the realm of myths and metaphors and legends and fairy tales. And, what I love about your way of approaching archetypes is that, well, I would call you a storyteller, like your Old Man and the sea goat Episode One was about Pluto and Capricorn. But it's really multifaceted.

You approach it from so many different lenses, from popular culture and singers to personal stories to great statements made from former political leaders, and, like, you have a great way of weaving multiple different levels of symbolism and occurrences of symbolism as a way of circumambulating an archetype like the final stages of Pluto and Capricorn or something like that. So I just love the way you do it. And I think that as far as I understand, like it in what you've told me about this series, it's like, however, whatever you plan on talking about and however you go into it, the idea is to help us get really deeply and ritually into the archetype that of whatever archetypal level of whatever you're looking at.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, yeah. And thank you, when I was setting up the podcast and on the platform and getting ready, going to the settings and typing in who's the host, Shawn Nygaard, and doing all that stuff. It wanted me to do a setting of, is this a weekly podcast? Is this a monthly podcast? This is bi-weekly; what is this? And I just immediately checked no set schedule because I have to go by a different schedule.

Like, ultimately, the soul has its own schedule. It doesn't necessarily work by the same clock that the foreground does. And so, I have every intention of doing episodes on a regular basis. I just don't know how regular, but I want to share a quick anecdote because the episode ends with a little nod to one of my teachers who passed away in 2021. His name was Jim Curtin.

And when I started working with him years ago, originally, I learned Carolyn Mason's model with archetypes and sacred contracts and working with the archetypes the way she lays them out and picking the key archetypes. The very first time I talked with Jim, he looked at the archetypes I had chosen, and he said, Where's your storyteller? I said I'm not a storyteller. I'm just not a storyteller. And over the years teaching classes in person or online, whatever it is, one of the feedback items that I've noticed that I've always thought is odd is people will say, you're a great storyteller. And I'm like, Huh, well, okay, I don't think of myself that way.

But I've kind of finally decided to own that and just kind of work with the podcast that way, but not lean too much into it because it seems to be more natural. You know, the way that it works, if I just leave it alone, it kind of takes over. But it just goes to show that we don't always know ourselves as well as we might think we do. And there's always room to explore. So, thank you. Yeah, I'm just glad that the storytelling part of it comes across.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, I mean, you can find the first episode you can find on Shawn's website, which is imagineastrology.com. Once you go there, you'll see the first entry on the homepage as the announcement of the podcast launch. And you'll find the description. Imagine That is a podcast about astrology archetypes, archetypal psychology, and imagination. Presented from a rather wide-ranging Jungian perspective, this is astrology seen through art, popular culture, history, movies, and literature. Influenced by the work of James Hillman, Carl Jung, 80s pop music, and fairy tales, among many other things. And that's what I'm trying to get at is that when, when I listened to that first episode, I mean, it was thoroughly night guardian, I want to call it, which is to say, like, you have this way of layering and weaving the symbol together, you, like I said, You, it's like you're moving around the circle, in this way that stays so devoted to the, might call it like the core archetype. But you don't ever try to arrest it or interpret it literally; you awaken it and draw it out through all of these different levels. And that's what's so wonderful about your talks, and there's a lot of care and time. You know, my work is five days a week, and it's a little bit more, you know, it's a great like to compliment if you like my work, and the kind of five days a week stream of meditations on archetypes. Think of this as a little bit more like a three-hour epic, or you're going really deeply into the material in a really focused way and much more like, it's like distilled and concentrated alchemy going on in these episodes. So I think it's just something that I really hope my listeners will check out because I think that you'll get the same spirit of archetypal symbolism in Shawn's work that you probably like in my own, and that's why we're also good buddies.

Shawn Nygaard
Thank you. Thank you again. And I will say it should be available, not just on my website there, because I couldn't figure out how to get a download link, but it should be available on all major podcast platforms. Let me know if you don't see it on the one you prefer; I'll see what I can do about it. When I'm doing it the way that I don't, I want to give people something that they can listen to more than once, if they want not, because, oh, they can listen to my voice. It's just I'm inspired by Toni Morrison, who wrote her first book because she wasn't out there. And she wanted to read the kind of book that wasn't out there. So she wrote it; I'm doing the podcast because it has something that I want to bring into the, into that conversation or into that chorus, that I don't necessarily see as much out there as I'd like to as much as it was there. When I started astrology, it's been getting obscured. So, I just want to keep bringing that out more and more and more.

Adam Elenbaas
And that leads me to the last question that I want to ask you before we turn our attention to the astrology of March, which is, what is the first episode about the Old Man and the Sea-goat? I just want everyone to hear just a little bit about what they could expect to hear when they listen to this first episode.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, it's, well, just to go back to when you had encouraged me to, kind of do the webinar on Pluto and Aquarius, back for nightlight when, it's kind of early, Pluto doesn't move into Aquarius, until next month. And this was maybe what, a year and a half ago or almost two years ago. And when I did that webinar, the Mountain Astrologer reached out to just ask if I could turn it into an article. So thank you to the Mountain Astrologer, and I ended up writing that article. And it was published in their Capricorn issue, and one of the things, and you can also actually find the article right now on the front page of astro.com. So it should be easy to spot. *But it's an article called Pluto and Aquarius when the center cannot hold. And like in the webinar, one of the things that I do before talking about Pluto and Aquarius is look at Pluto in late degrees of Capricorn. And that's one of the archetypal pieces that if you saw the webinar, and it's not a spoiler for the podcast because you'll hear the details of it.

But just the focus right now in the culture on old, on things old, and you'll hear what I mean in the podcast. But that's where the old man comes in. It's the Saturn dominance of things in the culture right now, with Saturn is the ruler of Capricorn. And I call it The Old Man and the Sea-goat little nod to Ernest Hemingway, but also because I talk about the sea goat as the original symbol for Capricorn, and moving away from the goat climbing to the top of the mountain and returning it to the waters under the Earth which is something I can it's a good segue into talking about Saturn and Pisces Pluto and Aquarius, but, I'll follow your lead.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, no, absolutely. Perfect timing. So before we move on to talking about these upcoming transits, I just want to once again encourage everyone go check out Imagine That, Shawn's new podcasts; you can find it on imagineastrology.com and the like right there or any major podcasting platform. If you search, Imagine that. And probably, if you add the keyword astrology, it should pull up right away. But yeah, I'm really thankful that we got a chance to plug that for you. And on that note, I would love to one of the first transits of March is Saturn's upcoming entrance into a water sign. Saturn's making this transition after having been in signs of its own rulership for quite a long time.

Let's just take up the real-time clock for a minute. And I want to just highlight here is on March 7 Tuesday, March 7, coming up really shortly, we have Saturn entering Pisces. There's a lineup of planets in Pisces at the same time Mercury, the sun Neptune, of course. This makes Saturn now co-present with Neptune, which, even though it's not conjunct by degree in ancient astrology, would be very meaningful. They're starting to commingle their influence, even though they're not there by body yet, and will do so over the course of the next two and a half years. This entrance of Saturn into Pisces forms one of the major ingresses of 2023. And what makes it special in part is also that we're getting Saturn out of about five years of being in Saturn's own signs. And I'm not even sure at this point that we will. Well, let me just put it this way, I think people will be shocked when they realize, oh, there's a different feeling than just the super Saturnine.

Like when Saturn moves through other signs, it acts as Saturn acts and behaves very, very differently. You know, five years of being in Saturn-ruled signs can make you forget how diverse Saturn can be. And I think that's one thing that I'm just really looking forward to is that there's just going to be such a different feeling in the air around this Saturn transit. Shawn, let's start by just what you think we have to look forward to from Saturn's entrance into Pisces. Maybe we could also ask at some point what we should be aware of, maybe what we should be careful of, but what are you? What makes you excited about this transition?

Shawn Nygaard
Well, first, it was exciting to be part of the Real Time Clock; I've never been part of your real-time clock before. So to talk about Saturn and Pisces, I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to, except that there'll be a change somehow, even if it's just internal. But I'm curious to see what goes on in the world, but what goes on in the psyche as well, because it's the shift from Cardinal Capricorn into fixed Aquarius, into mutable Pisces, a water sign. And if you just sit and spend time with, like, what is Cardinal Earth, Saturn in a cardinal earth sign being the boss and being all in control, and feeling confident, probably, and moving into air and being more fixed and feeling certain, it's like there's a step off the edge of the dock when Saturn moves into Pisces that can bring with it a great deal of uncertainty.

But to know that in advance and kind of be prepared for it, I think, is enormously helpful. But then also to spend time, and I can start to fill in a bit of that, you know, the backdrop that I like to talk about. To spend time in the backdrop means that you're not so caught up in the neurotic foreground. Because it could get neurotic because people, after feeling very, you know, I wouldn't say that current Western culture is dominated by a sense of security. But moving into Saturn and Pisces, you know, it can make people feel uncertain even more, but to fall back into the backdrop and to spend time there gives us some breathing room, it gives more options, it opens it up into really, really embrace what mutable means.

It means as a mutable person, myself, it's like to be adaptable and to be flexible and to work with that. At the same time, you're dealing with Saturn, who's known for his ability to be rigid and hold things together, which is what you want. But what does that mean to be able to be immutable, to be adaptable, and to go with the flow in a certain way, at times, it's going to be a learning process for all of us, I think.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, for sure. What would you mean? What do you make of the almost like the mood or change of atmosphere that could take place with Saturn going into a sign, that is, the rulership of Jupiter and the exultation of Venus? What kind of difference do you think that makes for Saturn?

Shawn Nygaard
Well, I think I mean, just in general, it's a huge difference. Like I mentioned in my podcast episode, the next episode is going to be about Saturn and Pisces. So I might repeat some things, there that I talked about here. But if you think about Capricorn because I'm kind of integrating Pluto, moving from Capricorn into Aquarius, and how that starts to end a whole series of things that started with Capricorn, not just Pluto's move but were in cycles that began with Saturn, Uranus in Well, that was Sagittarius, but moving into Capricorn, but there's a whole generation of people born with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn, the Saturn Neptune cycle, the current Saturn Pluto cycle, there's so much right now that has been founded in Capricorn. And that's going to shift, in a significant way, when Pluto moves into Aquarius, but then Saturn in Pisces, it can open something for, I hate to use the word gentle, but there's something about Pisces that to really work with Pisces to tune into Pisces and to be Piscean. And if you don't have any planets in Pisces, pretend to be Piscean because it's going to be there for all of us.

I remember when Neptune moved into Pisces years ago; I said when Neptune moves into Pisces, we all become poets, and there's some bad poetry out there these days, but this is something that we all can step into, we can all begin to work with, but it's softer. And in reflecting on it, I was just thinking it's a really difficult thing to say, but Saturn in Pisces does really well by embracing melancholy. And I'm not sure that anybody wants to do that I'm not sure. You know, it's sort of like pointing in the direction of what would now be called depression. But melancholy it's not the same thing as depression. I remember Hillman would talk about how depression is melancholy without the gods, right? It's like depression is the diagnosis, you know, obscured from the archetypal backdrop, right? Which gets us too tight and too bound and too anxious, but melancholy is actually something that offers space and offers a reflection. It's downtime, which I think, a lot of people desire; it's a space to dream. It's a space to literally imagine, so I just thought another reason for the podcast is, you know, it kind of suits Saturn in Pisces.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, there's something. Well, in our just thinking a little bit about the time that I spent over the past several years studying and practicing bhakti yoga. And one of the principles of that religious tradition, you could say, is the idea that there are different religious paths in the world, and some of them have been, and I thought this description I read somewhere recently was really nice, that some of them are paths of no crying, I thought it was a funny way of putting it.

In those paths, there's a sense that your personal nature is an illusion that you're supposed to be getting rid of as you merge back into the ground of being, and for people like that, the shedding of the idea of identity or ego in and so on is sort of primary, and they describe that path, this author did as a path of no tears. You don't find that individual that kind of sage or mystic crying. And he said, for other traditions, and he talked about contemplative Christians and Sufis and, of course, bhakti yogis and others.

The spiritual path is found in and through the world, in and through the body, through the valley of the world is a phrase that Hillman would use that we both like. And that is a path of tears. That's a path of crying. And he described it that way. And I just, I loved it. And I thought, yeah, I don't know if I would call myself very religious at this point; it's kind of stepping away from any kind of religious affiliation. But if I had to describe my religious path now, I've just kind of jokingly a few times to a friend who said, Well, whatever my path is, it's a path of tears and laughter and other very human fleshy things.

But I think one of the things that I'm hearing you say about Saturn and Pisces, and maybe you could say a little bit more, is that there's something that something about Saturn and Pisces that says there's a lot of richness and soulfulness in looking at the sad, broken longings and the complicated emotional spaces that we have that are sometimes filled with beauty, but a little bit like hurt. And then somehow these spaces can be opened up, or maybe even there's some sense of, like, don't exclude these things.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, okay, I'm going to this, this might sound like a sidetrack, but it's not. Trust me; I guess this is heading somewhere. And in the podcast, I might end up I don't think it'll be an ongoing series or anything like that. But it's like reflections from the treadmill. And one of the songs I was listening to recently because I'll get on repeat one mode, and I'll listen to something, and it's always important for me to follow the moods because I am a Piscean person in a lot of ways. And I follow the moods of things as if I'm a fish in the ocean, you know, just following something other than reason, following something other than the intellect, you know, the heart comes online.

So one of the songs I've been listening to on repeat and loving it is an album track from the Pet Shop Boys called Dreaming of the Queen. And let's see if I can remember the opening lyrics because it's quite the production. It's just wonderful. But he says, "I'm dreaming of the Queen, visiting for tea, you and her and I, and Lady Di. The Queen said I'm aghast. Love never seems to last, however hard you try. And I've replied that there are no more lovers left alive. No one has survived. There are no lovers left alive. That's why love has died." And it goes on. And it's kind of funny, too, the way the song goes. It's got a sense of humor and a little bit of playfulness.

Because in England, I guess dreaming of the Queen is a thing when it happens, but I thought it was interesting, but I've been listening to the song there are no more lovers left alive. There are no more lovers, but what a concept to be chatting with the Queen about this, and what I realized is that the album came out almost 30 years ago. The album came out almost 30 years ago when Saturn was in Aquarius. So I feel like I was getting a sense of something where too much Saturn too much, whatever it can, it's got other those signs have other strengths. And the planet has other interests than the heart, necessarily, which is important that those other interests are there, but you don't forget the heart. And maybe sometimes, right before Saturn is about to move into Pisces, this is one of those songs that came out. And so when Saturn moves into Pisces.

I want to take another step back into that backdrop to talk about Saturn in Pisces because we were also in a Saturn Neptune cycle that began in 1989. When Saturn and Neptune were conjunct in Capricorn, that was when the movie Dead Poets Society came out. I have an article on my website that references that, but I was thinking last night, you know, anticipating coming on and talking with you that, you know, we're in that cycle. Neptune is in Pisces. Saturn is going to enter Pisces, and we're kind of at that stage in the movie. Dead Poets Society, where the Robin Williams character, Keating, has been fired.

Nobody's interested in that, you know, it's like it's too disruptive that, you know, the romanticism, that kind of inspiration, that kind of life that he brought, was expelled. And you can, you know, there are different ways you can look at that. But you'll hear why I bring that up if you listen to the first episode of the podcast, and when I talked about the old man, but it's like when Saturn moves into Pisces, where Neptune is, and then we're in this cycle that's coming to a close. It's as if we need to rehire the Robin Williams character and become inspired that way.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, that is so well said. I am. I want to show everybody something that just popped into my head while you were talking if I can just get this little image saved here.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah. So you see how I operate. There are songs; there's music; there's culture; there are references, you know, maybe it's a story. Maybe it makes sense. Maybe it doesn't.

Adam Elenbaas
That makes total sense. And this is what I was telling everyone earlier, when I was saying, like, I just love the way that you'll pull things together. It's really, really nice. So in, now, this is an interesting story. So Saturn entered Pisces in January of 1994. So this was actually right around the time that I first saw Dead Poets Society. It had come out earlier, but I was, I think, when it came out, I was like nine years old. Yeah. You know, something like that. So I actually saw the movie for the first time in about 1994. Let me see. Hold on. I know exactly. So I was in the seventh grade. And I was, yep. Okay. So it would have been 94.

The year that Saturn went into Pisces was the first year that I saw Dead Poets Society because I was in the seventh grade. And one of the things that are super interesting about that is that after I saw it, I asked for my birthday for the poster. And my parents had it; what is it called dry mounted? Do you know what I'm talking about? So that it dry mounted for me. And I had a massive Dead Poets Society poster that I put in my bedroom. And the first place that it really adorned was a basement bedroom that I moved into because I didn't want to be close to my parents, right? Because I thought I was getting to that point where I was like, oh, they are such a drag, and so I was like, Oh, I don't want to hang around them. And so I was moving into the basement. And that poster was, like, the first thing that I hung in the basement, and it ushered me into this era in my life where I started writing all the time.

I ended up winning this, like the little Minnesota young authors competition thing. And, and I had this, I had notebooks, and I would just one notebook after another would fill up with poetry, little things that we just whenever I would write lots of stuff, some of it was poetry, and, and I was learning to play guitar. And it was this very, very angsty emotional time for me and music and I, and I've told people this on the channel before, and you and I talked about this one time when you were preparing your talk on Saturday and into Pisces that the album Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness had come out.

I just remember this period as being the period in which I lived in that basement room with that Dead Poets Society poster and was writing super angsty stuff and starting to feel like the quality of my emotions and the level of intensity that I had in my feelings and my thoughts was starting to make me feel like I didn't fit in at high school. There was, like, I was starting to hang out with more artistic people and distancing myself from the athletic community that I was a part of. So all of those things, in hindsight, it as an astrologer, strike me as so Saturn in Pisces.

Shawn Nygaard
Hmm. Well, yeah, and I think I've said this before, but what's the album called Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness? That's right. Yeah, I think the album cover is beautiful. Yeah. I find the album unlistenable just because of my musical tastes. You know, but from an archetypal perspective, it doesn't matter if I like it or not; I get it. I get the timing of that coming out and just the title and the way the album cover looks. It's so resonant, but who wants to, again, you know, enter the realm of melancholy? But that's, you know, it's not the only thing on the agenda. But it's really important to take that time to honor Saturn; it means what are we spending time doing? What are we spending time within this sign? And for Pisces? That's one of the entryways that are like the door opening to enter Saturn in Pisces terrain.

Adam Elenbaas
You know what, I'll never forget, I had a girlfriend during this period of time. And I, we broke up. And one of the last letters that she ever wrote me, which was like a very sappy love note that she wrote me, we went to the same church. And the love note was written on the back of a church bulletin that she passed me during the worship service. And on the back of it, there was something about celebrating Mary. And it was like Mary, and there was one of those Star of the Sea emblems. There's a lot of, like, Mary and Mary and Star of the Sea; there's something in like Christian iconography and art. But anyway, it was a picture on the back of the bulletin of the, you know, like the Virgin Mary, mother Mary, and this Star of the ocean. And I kept this bulletin with this love note. And that was during that period, too. And I just was, I would read it and reread it, and I was so heartbroken. I cried for like a week after she broke up with me.

And just to me, I've been reflecting on this because I've been jotting down a lot of notes recently and thinking about how to talk about this transit. And as I was reflecting on Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness, one of the songs on that album is called Mary Star of the Sea. And I think that was one of the probably the first times that I can remember in hindsight; now I'm realizing that I had something like, I don't know if we call it a synchronicity, but a meaningful sync between this album, the song, this bulletin, this love note, this breakup, and they were all like, commingled, during that period.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, that's right, on time. And it's one of those things that because Pisces is the two fish, you know. Now, melancholy isn't the only door. But it's also if you enter that door, you want to remember that there's also this inspirational piece, you know, where, you know, a lot of the great art, a lot of the great stuff comes from that place of melancholy. But it's also looking at what inspires you.

You know, it's that shift from Capricorn, where Saturn rules and Mars is exalted. And they're the malefics, which have a lot to do with the nature of the culture, we find ourselves in today into Pisces, which is, you know like you said, Jupiter ruled, and Venus is exalted, and those are the benefics. So it's not like suddenly we can expect everything to be benefic. But it's, it's that shift in tone that opens up other possibilities, that lifts us up from that kind of malefic backdrop of the last many, many years.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, yeah. There's something about that period when I'm reflecting on it. Now, just to kind of tie this together. That, you know, I ended up doing an MFA in creative nonfiction. And a huge portion of the book I wrote, which would end up launching my career in astrology, and like, my whole 20s were defined by going to graduate school for creative writing. That all started during that period. Now that's in my 11th House, which was also called the House of wishes and dreams. But I really started my trajectory as a creative writer during that very angsty period, which creatively was at the time; I would never have guessed how far that inspiration would have taken me and how many dreams and possibilities and doors it would have opened that were by comparison to how angsty I was feeling would end up going in so many other different directions.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, yeah. And I think part of what I draw from what you're saying is, you know, that there is this angstyness, there is this melancholy, or is this the sadness? But it's, that's not the whole story of what's going on in that moment of feeling that, yeah, other stuff is at work. You know, that's where inspiration can come from that. But you won't know that if you don't go there. Right. And so that's part of the adaptability or the mutability of Pisces, is it if you're gonna get all fixed, you're not following the instructions.

You know, because I sometimes I just imagine these planets and signs when they're moving, you know, come with instructions, right? This is in Pisces, they're kinda like more like Ikea instructions with the pictures rather than the words right here, and you can, you know, I remember when I set up an Ikea thing upside down by accident and had to deconstruct it and put it together again. That can happen. But you know, it's mutable, which means everything can be mutable. It's not just, you know, anything getting too fixed, and you'll know when to, you know, ah, this is it, and stick with it, and stick with it. Because that's also Saturn is the commitment to something. But you'll know when to commit when, when the thing requires commitment, and it's a different kind of commitment than Saturn and Aquarius,

Adam Elenbaas
I mean, the commitment also to the hard feelings, that is a hallmark, and of that period of time for me, like, I remember going to Cheapo Records here in Minneapolis. And flipping through that would be a little click noise, that flipping through the CDs would make it they've all been in a row and you don't click, click, click, click, click, and you'd be flipping through looking at all of them. And I mean, when I was in really dark moods, which was pretty often during that period, I would go, and I would just spend this, I would just be just stubborn about finding music that could somehow address the moment. And I ended up finding so much good music during that time that I still love because I was so, like, almost obsessed with finding a musical cure. You know, and often the cure was not uplifting; it was something that would match the mood and give it some kind of put me into that archetypal background. I think that some kind of following, you know, almost like there's a fluidity like I can see myself exploring and meandering around looking for breadcrumb trails that lead to that album.

Shawn Nygaard
It's like fish in the ocean or like echolocation. It's like by echolocation, you know, it's a different way of operating and moving through the world. You know, when Saturn moves through Pisces, and Neptune is in Pisces, as we're heading to the close of that cycle that began in 1989. Yeah, and I'll just add that in 1989, that was my first year of college. And my first week of college ended with them showing Dead Poets Society. And there, and I'd already seen it, and I already loved it, but it's like, I saw it again. And it put me in that mode of, you know, deep reflection when I went back to my dorm room and was just kind of pondering things.

But that year, I became kind of a rebel poet. And the classes I was taking and what I was writing about, I imagined myself being a rat in a sewer looking for true love, and anything went, and that was when I met my best friends, whom I'm still friends with today. So you know, that's the kind of, you know, the remember, there's two fish, and that can be contradictory. But they're together; you don't get one without the other. And if you pretend that the other isn't there, it'll reserve the right to take this back at some point, but it'll turn into a shark, and it'll get you. The other one is the way to say it. Is it if you forget the other one is there? It'll remind you.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, that's great, it's; in some images, their tails are tied together. You know, those are always tied together.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah. Yeah. And that's the core symbol is these fish tied together, swimming in opposite directions. But it's that paradox of things that seemed to have opposite intent actually working together. It but stretching us. They stretch us, and you know, that's part of what's asked of us.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, absolutely. I like that the images in one of the images that I like. One is swimming eastward and upward; the other one is westward and downward. And I've heard someone reflect on that one time, you know, talking about the desire to go up, and the desire to go down and in and that these, oftentimes, these two impulses, like call it spirit and soul and humans work, for example, are, you know, they'll be pitted against one another or something, that there's like, some way of living life where they, they somehow work together.

Shawn Nygaard
But and yeah, and I wouldn't say, you know, that the, you know, I recommend the going down in first right now because that's the part that is largely absent in the culture.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, and I think what's amazing about when I reflect on that period is that so much of the going down and into the feelings that I was having as a young, just developing artist, for example. They would be those things, and embracing those things would be, in many ways, inseparable from a spiritual impulse that would develop at a later point in my life. And so yeah, I think that you know, but I like your advice to recommending to go down and in, I think that's a good one.

Shawn Nygaard
It is a good place to start. And just in terms of an archetypal story, when I was a kid, one of my favorite childhood books was called The Man who took the Indoors Out. And it was like, you know, I would read it over and over again, and the man who took all of the chairs and dishes and everything from his House and musically conducted it out into the world. And it was like, you know, baby training for archetypal psychology, you know, for Shawn Nygaard, you know, to have this book, because when you think of that title, taking the indoors out, you know, it like, you know, starting from the inside, and then moving to the outside is it's not the only way, but I just encourage that, you know, for a lot of people.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, um, to keep us moving along in March here. Let's look at the next transit. I think there's a lot more that can be said about Saturn's entrance into Pisces; certainly, I'll be covering it myself from a few different angles. Shawn, I'm guessing you'll be doing something on your podcast about Saturn into Pisces, too, right? That was your plan. I thought you had said.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, I mean, I taught it at nightlight, and I don't want to simply repeat what I did there. But I think I'm actually going to use an audio clip from that talk in the next episode of the podcast, but it's going to be the Saturn in Pisces episode, you know, released before March 7,

Adam Elenbaas
the talk you gave for the students, I believe, was called Dream Time. Yeah, there's a really good talk. And so, I can't recommend highly enough that, again, you check out imagine astrology.com, where you can find Shawn's work and also the first episode of the podcast, but then eventually, it sounds like pretty soon there'll be another episode on Saturn into Pisces, which could give you more on, on that. Transit from Shawn's perspective,

Shawn Nygaard
I kind of suspect that, you know, as the podcast develops, it's not just one episode that tells stories or tells a story, but it'll be an ongoing story from episode to episode. If you listen to it that way, you know, it develops from the previous episode or previous episodes, and then, you know, just kind of all becomes linked.

Adam Elenbaas
March 23, Pluto enters Aquarius, and you have done a fantastic job in the written word for the Mountain Astrologer for my students at nightlight; you came and gave a fantastic talk. You've given that talk elsewhere, I believe. So you've had a lot to say about this already. And you talked a little bit about this in the first episode of your podcast, too, in concluding thoughts on Pluto in Capricorn; you do talk a little bit about Pluto into Aquarius, but here it is March 23, the same month, and you can see actually, you know what.

So you will see here Pluto's entrance into Aquarius on March 23. Now, Pluto is going to spend a little bit of time and 2023 and Aquarius before retrograding back into the late degrees of Capricorn. So you've got from late March until about the middle of June this year. Then it comes back, you know, the early part of 2024 all the way through about the end of 2024 toward the autumn with another slight retrograde to the very last degrees of Capricorn. So by the end of 2024, Pluto is entering Aquarius to stay. So you could call this like a, you know, a year and a half long launch pad that Pluto has moving in, you know, sort of blasting off into Aquarius; we're all going to get a taste for it.

One of the videos I did recently, Shawn was on, like, what not to listen to about Pluto into Aquarius, and I covered, you know, the five most hyped up, exaggerated, over-the-top things that you might see people saying that I've seen in my social media feed like the whole society is going to change on March 23. And we're going to make the leap to the Age of Aquarius; overnight. Most of what I talked about was like how this transit, although it can have so many different, very powerful transformative effects. That is to stay away from those that say they're all going to happen in some singular moment of massive societal change.

Shawn Nygaard
The entire planet Earth is going to become an AI Chatbot.

Adam Elenbaas
So it's like, be careful about that, but I did promise that we would talk about some of the things that I think you can expect from Pluto and Aquarius. And really, I think, you know, there's no better person to talk about that than Shawn in some ways because I've had the pleasure of hearing Shawn talk about this multiple times, both formally and like informally over dinners, like, you know, to the point where I was like, You need to come and teach this. And so, yeah, so Shawn, what do you think about this transit? Walk us through it, tell us everything that's gonna happen.

Shawn Nygaard
You know, I want to save a lot. You know, one of the ways I operate is if I write an article, if I do a webinar, if I do a podcast, and it's all on the same topic, you can read or listen to or watch all of them. And I'm not just because you need to see me; it's just part of me is programmed to do things differently each time; you know, I can repeat things, but I'll also say new things. And that's one of the ways that I learned astrology was, you know, just listening to lectures from the same teachers and on the same topics, but the same teacher doing this, the same topic at different locations, and seeing, you know, that they did things differently. That each that certain teachers that I followed was worth listening to. And that's what I admire, you know, so I don't mean to be repetitive or anything, but in the article, I avoid any talk of artificial intelligence because I know, that's one of the routes that people talk about because of Aquarius, it's not my thing. I mean, if everything wants to be taken over by artificial intelligence, I will still be a human being with a soul. And that takes precedence over anything, you know. So I just kind of come from that perspective.

I was looking for other things to say, other ways to talk about it. And I'll say, you know, just another bit of feedback that I liked over the years that I, one of my favorite comments from somebody was they liked that my answer in a q&a was, I don't know. Because I said, you know, they asked the question, and I said, I don't know. And instead of pretending that I know, or carrying on as if I know, or, you know, whatever, it was just like, Yeah, I don't know.

And so with Pluto and Aquarius, there's a lot that, I don't know, there's a lot that I think a lot of people don't know, but that is a doorway into how I want to talk about this right now. Because one of the things I keep thinking about, you know, because Pluto, for example, when I get when I work with things, I Pluto, I just very different from Saturn, you know, like I try to separate the two things that I'm working with or looking at, or I tried to find something to differentiate it, to pull them apart to start to see Pluto, you know, as clearly as I can on Pluto's terms. But Pluto's, you know, Pluto and Saturn have a lot of similarities. But Pluto goes into the depths as the ruler of the underworld. And that's the realm of the unknown.

And so, to go back in terms of the cycles, you know, Pluto, 500 years ago, in Aquarius, was the start of the scientific revolution. So it was the start of a whole way of thinking and perceiving that wasn't quite the way that you know, since then, that it was before then. We entered the scientific revolution. And it's something, and it's perspective, it's a mind frame, it's a way of looking at the world that we take for granted today. Because we're so used to it, and we depend on it in so many ways, just to have this conversation, you know, is, you know, and we're indebted to the scientific revolution for this live stream. And then, when Pluto returned to Aquarius 248 years later, that was amidst the Age of Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason, which was a product of the scientific revolution.

So these are the grand cycles of the scientific revolution, the Age of Enlightenment, emphasizing light. And when Pluto comes along now and enters Aquarius, I want to emphasize, first of all, that you know to follow suit. It's gonna, you know, it's a shift in consciousness. It's a shift in how we look at something, but Pluto would be most linked with the unconscious. So there's something about developing that relationship with the unknown. With those parts of us that don't know, you know, which is a contrast to asking a chatbot for the answers and having it spew out some elegant, richly detailed answer that threatens human consciousness. Who knows? It's like the start of the pandemic. There was that time where I think if people go back and remember that, it was, we didn't know what was gonna happen tomorrow, in five minutes. That evening, we didn't know we couldn't look six months ahead because we didn't know if there would be a vaccine or vaccines important. Do we care about vaccines, bah, bah, bah. It's like we didn't know.

And what that means, instead of being intimidated by that or turned off by that, I started to think of that as the soul has never been closer. It's right here we are, like, arm and arm, neck and neck with the unconscious. And that's something Jung was very clear; Carl Jung was very clear about the role of the unconscious. And certain of his quotes get skewed, you know, and in the wake of 500 years of focus on light, and consciousness and enlightenment, and the sun being the center, and the light shining and shining the light on everything, to the point where, you know, you walk into a Target store, and the lighting is such that there are no shadows. There are no shadows because, you know, things happen in the shadows; you know, people might steal something.

So get rid of all the shadows, you know, all of that. And this move away from the shadows has affected our mental health. Because it's just too bright, there is too much light all of the time, and it's a confusing conversation. So I'm just touching on something here that I'm going to probably talk about more in-depth elsewhere, you know, with more time, but do you see what I'm talking about is that to really work with Pluto, we want to be you know, and there are other planets moving through the, you know, around the, in the sky. And so it's not the only story; it's not the whole story. But we want to be able to start to embrace shadows, again, not the Jungian shadow to bring to light, and you know, all of that it's to really develop, redevelop, and renegotiate a relationship with the unknown and with the shadows, you know, to be able to chill out. You know, when it's a hot day in Minnesota in the summer, you know, you'd like to go into the shade under a tree. That's kind of what I'm talking about.

Adam Elenbaas
And what is it about Aquarius in particular? I mean, I feel like you're what you're describing to me sounds thoroughly Plutonian. But what is it that you think will amplify some of these things about its move into Aquarius from Capricorn?

Shawn Nygaard
Well, that's where again, I go to the backdrop, you know, first because I'm always, even if I'm not talking about it, that's where I'm coming from and kind of, you know, positioning myself and Capricorn Aquarius and Pisces are the watery part of the sky. You know, you have the sea goat. And then you have the water carrier. And then you have Pisces, the fish, right? And the sea goat is in the aquifer that's under the Earth. You know, so it's underneath. And Aquarius, the water carrier is, you know, one of the ways to look at it is it's pulling up the water from the well. You know, Aquarius rules wells.

So it's pulling up the water from the aquifer. So it's this move that goes from Capricorn to Aquarius to Pisces that's a move upward in the northern hemisphere. That's a move; that's an increase in light. So that's one of the reasons I'm talking about light. And the focus on light, you know, over the last 500 years has skewed things very dramatically. You know, that's why the Robin Williams character in Dead Poets Society gets fired. You know he's bringing he's; you can't predict him. He's driven from the soul. There's this unknown element that threatens things, you know, and so boom; it can go away.

And so it's, it's that piece of Aquarius, that also, you know because it's a return of the light. But it's also that Aquarius has its relationship with the edges. It has that relationship rather than the sun in the center. We're talking about the edges and the margins, and the places people don't necessarily look or necessarily want to look, but that's the place that's neck and neck with the unknown if we follow Jung again, the future is formed in the unconscious. And so to be in touch with the edges of things is to be able to pull in the future and be a part of that, you know, to, what's going on in the unconscious. And I don't necessarily mean the dreams you have at night. It could be that, but there was something about that song dreaming of the Queen, you know, that was like, Okay, time to pull in some love again. You know, because there are no more lovers left alive, and to be dramatic about it is like, really, I think, great, you know, like, it makes a point, you know, has a great way of making a point.

But to pull from those edges is really the place where the future comes from. And that's, you know, that sense of Aquarius and the move to the future. And I want to just say one more thing, because unless, no, go ahead. Oh, one of the dynamics about Pluto and Aquarius that is really something to consider is the question. How do you wrench the new from the old? Yeah. And that's, you know, a huge move in the culture, you know, because it's to really pull in that new that innovation, the invention that Aquarius is all about, you know, it's leaning against, often centuries of tradition, or set, you know, decades or centuries of the way we do things. And Pluto and Aquarius is asking for the new.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, and there's something, you know, it's interesting because that, well, for example, in both the enlightenment, scientific revolution, the age of reason, these kinds of Aquarian periods, there's a sense of like, a prevailing attitude is that we must progress from error toward truth. And the past is often looked at through that perspective. From that perspective, the past is often looked at as sort of primitive, dark, unenlightened, you know, and so forth.

What I find interesting is that you will often have, like, I've looked at the charts of a variety of people in the psychedelic community that I was part of, like big figures like Terence McKenna and others, you'll often find a really strong Aquarian signature in some of those charts, where what they are saying is almost the opposite. Rather than moving from error to truth, in terms of like a forward movement of scientific progress or something, there's an idea that it's that march of progress that has forgotten something that needs to go back to the past, but the past year is really a metaphor.

It's not; you shouldn't be taken too literally. But for example, McKenna and others were a part of a movement that was called the archaic revival. And a lot of them had super Aquarian signatures in their charts. And I was like; I found that interesting because it seemed like what they were saying was, well, in, you know, in spite of all the many benefits that have come about through advanced medicine, and technology and stuff like that, we've also forgotten in some ways the soul wisdom of indigenous people from 1000s of years ago, just, you know, the march of progress, can stamp those things out by looking at them as primitive rather than understanding what might have been very enlightened about a way of life that existed previously or something.

So I wonder, I've also wondered about those tensions coming up. Because, you know, when I think about, like you said, in the beginning, when I think of artificial intelligence, I think, well, if they're not going to crush my soul, you know, like, you were saying, like, I'm still a human soul. And that's what matters. And, like, how does that juxtaposition between the forward progressive, futuristic thinking of Aquarius sort of pair with the tendency for that forward thinking to potentially stamp out something that lives in a darker, richer, more fertile place that could be looked at in very impatient ways? Like primitive? Does that make sense?

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, I mean, it just made me think of, you know, the fact that in Dead Poets Society, they're referencing Dead Poets. Poets from the past, you know, where they're pulling from in that movie, is something to bring inspiration for the future. Right? And right, and to miss that, you know, in the interests of only moving into the future. You know, I always like having that, you know, kind of tail in the past.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah. And I think that that speaks to, I mean, often I think that when people get to know Jung's psychology, like, as you were saying earlier, you were sort of saying, like, this isn't necessarily when I say, you know, we're looking at the unconscious, it's not like, well, let's go and figure out what's in the unconscious so we can make it conscious, you know, yeah. In a sense, it's a little bit more like saying, oh, there's, there's a deep soul. You know, and I think of ayahuasca and the way that that opened up a reverence for the unconscious in my life, it was jungle medicine, you know, it was like, it was forest, it was deep, it was rich, it was in the soil. And, you know, and with an indigenous healer that was whistling strange melodies that sounded hundreds and hundreds of years old.

I mean, and those kinds of experiences anyway, and many people, you can have experiences that expose you to soul in many different ways, right? But for me, that was a very like, Oh, my God, I have a soul. Like, yeah, because this was soulful stuff. And I think that when you get in touch with that, and I think a lot of people, you could say a lot about this because you're you've really had a lot of good things to say about this over time.

The idea is not exactly to once you find that soul area to be like, okay, good. Now, let me excavate it, bring it all into under an examining table with a microscope, understand it all perfectly, consciously, integrated, it's, it's more like understanding that that's there and understanding that it has an operative power in your life, and that it's a life-giving stratum of your very being and that you actually, you want to have a relationship with it, but you don't want to try to master it or colonize that space.

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, it's where Jung was the founder of analytical psychology, and Hillman founded in the wake of Jung; archetypal psychology, which, right off the bat with archetypal psychology, he differentiates away from analytical because analyzing the psyche is one thing. And it relies very heavily on what's known. You know, that's where Hillman would criticize people for going to the dream dictionary and looking up what this means; you know, rather than what archetypal psychology does, it says to stick with the image. Right? And one of the ways I like talking about it is to think about the Wizard of Oz.

You know, because Dorothy starts that thing in black and white, in the Dustbowl Depression era, Kansas. And what comes along, you know, the cyclone comes along, but it knocks her unconscious, like the weather, the storm, you know, a door, I think, swings and, you know, knocks her out. So, and then she's in Oz, with color, and with mystery, and with all these other characters and all these other, you know, kind of full of imagination. But it's unconsciousness that gets her there.

You know, it's following into the unconscious, and Salman Rushdie has this brilliant essay where he talks about the Wizard of Oz. And one of the things he says is, you know, that that notion of, there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home, like, and then you think that it's, you know, Depression era, Dustbowl black and white. You know this is the Eden that Dorothy is longing to go back to. And, you know, he pokes fun of it, but I think in a very intelligent way, but it's the idea that you know, entering the Oz, you know, she goes from a place where she knows where all the roads lead.

And that ends up that's when you end up in a black and white world and depressed, you know, and Dustbowl, you know, it's like, Oz has a reviving quality about it. You know, it's like, it's as if she can't wait to get back to bring what she's got, you know, with her, but the yellow brick road is she doesn't know where it's gonna lead. And it's circular. You know, it's not a straight line. It's, you know, do you want to travel for the next 20 years on a black-and-white dirt road? Or do you want to follow the yellow brick road, which, you know, it's again, it's not the whole story, you know, but it's, I like that as a metaphor comparison with consciousness can paired to the unknown. And you know what is going on in the unknown without analyzing it too much? You know you don't even need to analyze it at all. But live with the images, live with the figures that come because that's it; it's important in ways that we don't even know.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, to make a little comparison and to draw it back to our discussion about Aquarius and light and future and progress. I think the temptation or the compulsion that Pluto may have us get in touch with, like exploring, if we're going to talk about shadows, let's talk about the shadow of the impulse to illuminate and clarify everything right or to move toward truth from error. And, like, just that whole trip, right?

I remember one time I made a comment that was just off the cuff. And often those are the most honest, you know, someone was like, Don't you think it's great that the Dalai Lama and all these Buddhists are being hooked up to electrodes and their meditations are being studied with neuroscience? And I laughed, and I was like, it's just another way to kill their tradition. And I didn't mean that to condemn scientifically studying the value of meditation or something. It was just a really super off the cuff and cynical thing that I said, and afterward, I realized, like, No, there's some truth to that, for me, for just for my mind, from my perspective, I prefer thinking about meditation, with a whole romantic tapestry of images, that that come to my mind when I think about the Dalai Lama, and Buddhists, and I'm not at all I'm really not trying to say that one should not study meditation scientifically or something, it's just that the reason that I sort of made that comment off the cuff like that was because I don't there are some things about meditation that for my psyche just prefer to remain in the unknown, that they have more fertile, like operative power in my psyche, when I just don't know certain things about them. And I can hold them in a mystery place. And I wonder, you know, if that won't be a big challenge for some of us or for the larger collective during this Pluto and Aquarius period?

Shawn Nygaard
Yeah, I mean, I think, again, to just go back to the huge cycle 500 years ago, you know, that we're living in the legacy of scientific knowledge, scientific awareness, enlightenment knowledge, you know, that was when the encyclopedia came out, you know, with all of the information compiled into one, and look what we have now. We have a chatbot, which provides this, like, you know, I can know even more, you know, and I can learn really quickly, I can ask it anything, and I can absorb it, it's sort of like Wikipedia on steroids, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and, you know, that's it's made us very uncomfortable with the unknown. Maybe even afraid of the unknown. And unfamiliar with the unknown, as strange a thing is that is to say, but, you know, we could do really well to again, kind of negotiate that relationship with the unknown, where it becomes, you know, not all the time, but something exciting, something, you know, to look forward to something, you know, to give it together, or mentally health challenged, brains a rest. And in that sense, it's relieving. It's like going under that tree into the shade in the heat of winter. It's like with the light of the sun of the last 500 years; we need some shade to give our brains rest, to give our mental health a rest to regain health.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, there's no position like the servant of the King to know the ways of the King enough to appreciate them, but also to be the one you know, if you're most close to the King, you can easily you'll be the one that maybe wears out their welcome the quickest or gets tired or fed up with the King the quickest too, and that strikes me as appropriate for the symbolism of Ganymede, who's this cupbearer of Zeus and it's like close proximity to this kind of, you know, traditionally Zeus is associated among other things with like the ordering principle which is sort of similar to the sun they both can represent kings. So it's like, you know, something about Aquarius is like there's a close proximity with, with Zeus are with ordering patterns of order and structure, but it's also the close proximity to them that can make you sort of disgusted and tired of them.

And so one of the things that I think is promising about such periods is that you often see that romantic the Romantic period, for example, follows closely after the age of reason. There's in to speak now going back to Saturn, and Pisces strikes me as promising that we have such a, in a sense, much more romantic kind of feeling from Saturn and Pisces, who is the ruler of Aquarius, as Pluto moves in because I think ideally, you know, for whatever, quote-unquote, progress there is being made in industries like tech and science and all this stuff. You hope that the poets will, you know, be close at hand so that we, you know, we, we can collectively, you know, like, like, get fed up with it. We also need to be like scrutinizing and like, careful of the impulse toward, like, reason, and order.

Shawn Nygaard
You're talking to somebody who named his website. Imagine astrology and his podcast, Imagine That. So, you're preaching to the choir.

Adam Elenbaas
I'm sure all the listeners, I'm preaching to the choir too.

Shawn Nygaard
Where it's, you know, it's really that step into the romanticism of the world. This is part of the, you know, episode two of my podcast; it will be, as you know, that the Romantic era, you know, can come alive when we're looking at Pisces, where Venus is exalted. I mean, just to bring it back to kind of a story kind of perspective. You know, I don't mind saying I was born with Venus in Pisces. And it's hooked up with other things in my chart, but it's in the seventh House. It's on the descendant. And I come from a family where my grandparents were both musicians. They were both artists. And they met at Juilliard, you know, and he was a violinist, and she was an opera singer. And this is the family psyche that I was born into, that, that that lives when I'm in my Venus in Pisces.

But, you know, listen to a lot of astrologers, you know, that kind of, you know, put Pisces or this kind of thing with delusional kind of stuff; I have had to stay away from all of that in the astrological world and figure out, you know, well, is it? You know, the imagination. It's too much of a thing to head into at the, you know, at this point, but it's so intimately connected with the soul. And the soul is full of mysteries. And that notion that we don't know is really important. But engaging at that level in the romantic style is just part of, you know, what can be accessed when planets are in Pisces, especially Neptune and even Saturn?

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, that's a nice, nice way to put a bow on it, I think. Yeah, it's like, well, if there's any silver lining here, it's that, you know, there's nothing that will bring out the poet's quicker than getting fed up with a bunch of AI bots.

Shawn Nygaard
And, you know, in the end, Scrooge softens up. Yeah, that's true.

Adam Elenbaas
Yes, true. And I think that, like, it's important to remember that Saturn was in ancient astrology, Saturn was the planet that said it was said to be associated with or to rule melancholy. And that melancholy was sometimes considered an affliction like a physical or mental illness. But it was also at times considered the gift of artists and of really special people.

Shawn Nygaard
Just one thing I'd add there is, you know, if you're thinking, Oh, I'm not an artist, so what does that have to do with me or anything like that? We're at a time when, you know, artists doesn't just mean painter or singer or, you know, musician or something like that. It's the art of creating a business. It's the art of what you are most passionate about. What you're living about is to approach it from the position of art, you know, is to take it seriously in a way that Saturn, I believe, will respect when he's moving through Pisces.

Adam Elenbaas
I'm remembering the Jack Kerouac quote, that is, "the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars in the middle, you see the blue center like pop, and everybody goes, ah."

Shawn Nygaard
It's a complicated chart there. I suspect.

Adam Elenbaas
That makes me curious. Did he? I wonder if you know his chart? I don't know. Okay, I'm just for the sake of just, maybe, maybe we'll hit on something very magical here. Wouldn't that be cool? If Yeah, indeed, he had the Sun, Venus, and Uranus all in Pisces.

Shawn Nygaard
And there we go. There's, that's one of the things to keep in mind the backdrop of all that is, you know, Venus exalted in Pisces, even if, you know, she's not there most of the time. And even if you don't have that in your chart, that becomes a factor of the times we're entering.

Adam Elenbaas
Well, as usual, when we hang out and talk astrology, we go in all sorts of magical directions. I really appreciated having you here on the show today. I want to direct everyone one last time to imagineastrology.com, where you can check out Shawn's first episode of his new podcast Imagine That: Astrology and Archetypes. The first episode is the old man in the sea goat, a reflection on the final stages of Pluto in Capricorn, which I like again; I couldn't recommend it highly enough. You can also book readings with Shawn and check out the upcoming classes. He has newsletters and all sorts of ways of staying in touch with him. Shawn, is there anything else that I can direct people to before we go? Now

Shawn Nygaard
That's a lot. That's kind of the hub of everything on my website. And so you know, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to come on and talk about all this because it's, it couldn't be more fun to keep entertaining these topics.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you. Yeah. And well, we need to do this more regularly. But what maybe I'm gonna I know you're going to be busy with the production of your show, and we want to steal too much information from your show. But maybe after new episodes, we will have to occasionally have you come on and give us little synopsis or talk again in new ways about the topic, and then we can make sure people are aware of what the latest episodes are like.

Shawn Nygaard
Sure. Yep, absolutely. That would be great. Well, thank you again.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, everyone. I hope you all enjoyed this. We will have horoscopes. Alex is joining me to break down our horoscopes for all 12 signs for Saturn and Pluto entering new whole sign houses in your birth chart. So we'll be doing that. And over the next couple of weeks, I'll be looking at Pluto into Aquarius and Saturn entering Pisces from a variety of different perspectives. I've already done some videos on both of these subjects in the past if you want to go back and look at some of them; if you search my archives for Saturn into Pisces or Pluto into Aquarius, you can find more there as well.

So thank you, everybody, for listening. As always, before we end, Don't forget to like and subscribe. Share your comments with us today. What parts really clicked for you? When you heard Shawn talk about the Wizard of Oz? We'd love just love to hear what really resonated. And if you want, you can find transcripts of any of my daily talks on the website nightlight astrology.com Alright, that's it for today. Thanks, everyone. Take it easy. Bye.