August 30, 2023 • 54 mins
Astrologer Steven Forrest joins Amanda to talk about how the planets guide the evolution of our souls, develop our higher consciousness, and show us our optimal path in life!
Having received praise from the likes of Sting, Robert Downey Jr. and Oprah Magazine, Steven is an exceptionally talented astrologer, writer, and lecturer who wrote his first book on astrology in the 1980s to immediate critical acclaim.
Amanda credits astrology as a massive gateway to develop her intuition and psychic abilities. She believes astrology is a great tool- especially for those looking for a greater meaning and purpose in life.
Amanda & Steven cover:
- Evolutionary astrology
- Why you sometimes don’t feel aligned with the pop culture version of your zodiac sign
- The psychology tied to astrology
- What is a birth chart?
- What are transits & progressions? How do they make it easier to be human
- How to use astrology as a support system during tough moments in your life
- Electromagnetic energy & how we physiologically interact with the sky and planets
- The connection between astrology and psychic abilities
There is tremendous opportunity for growth in the next few years according to the astrological charts. If you’re looking for spiritual maturation and are ready to do the work, now is a great time to begin a spiritually enriching, developmental practice that feeds your soul and spirit!
Forrest Astrology Resources:
“The stars are only the beginning, here is your guide to the universe of potential within us all” - The Inner Sky by Steven Forrest
The Sky Within (get your natal birth chart)
https://www.forrestastrology.com/products/the-sky-within-report
The Sky Log (dialogue between the sky when we were born and the sky today):
https://www.forrestastrology.com/products/skylog-transits-report-1-year-emailed
Lila - Your Ultimate Relationship App:
Forrest Center for Evolutionary Astrology
https://forrestastrology.center/
Steven’ Blog on Saturn in Pisces:
Follow Amanda on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulpathology/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hi, everyone, It's Amanda Rieger Green. Welcome to Soul Sessions.
I have an exceptional guest today that I am eager
to share with you, Stephen Forrest. Welcome Stephen, Thank you,
it's good to be here. It's great to connect with
you virtually. Stephen Forrest is an American astrologer, writer, and lecturer.
(00:31):
He is the author of nearly a dozen astrological books
and the founders of one of the founders of the
School of Evolutionary Astrology. Some of his books include The
Inner Sky, The Changing Sky, The Night Speaks, The Book
of Pluto, one of my favorites, Yesterday's Sky, Astrology, and Reincarnation.
(00:51):
But also, apart from his body of work and involvement
in various scientific and academic institutions astrological groups, he also
gets a tremendous amount of praise from the pop culture arena.
So I want to make note of that, and I
actually want to quote a couple of notable pop culture
(01:13):
folks who have commentary on Stephen that I think that
resonate deeply with me. Sting. Sting says that Stephen manages
to disarm the skeptic as well as debunk the Charlatan
that surrounds popular astrology with language that is intelligent, cogent,
and poetic. Oprah magen Seine has described Stephen as stopping
(01:37):
the blame game in its tracks, We're Warriors for filling
our turbulent evolutionary path. And one other quote that I
love because it really resonates with me is from Robert
Downey Junior. I marvel at the accuracy of Stephen's readings.
He insists that nothing is so grave as to be
beyond repair, and correspond that there is no rainbow that
(02:02):
won't be evaporated by poor judgment in the now so
high praise and acclaims, but you also get them for me.
Welcome Stephen again, and I'm excited to introduce you to
our listeners, but also reintroduce you to those who have
been touched by your work and your writing and your teachings.
(02:23):
One of the things I want to start with is
your very first book in was It nineteen eighty four,
nineteen eighty six, nineteen eighty four four The Inner Sky.
I've got my copy here. It's dog eared, well loved
and read. What I find incredible is I feel like
you set the stage with this book for your work
(02:43):
in evolutionary astrology, and the quote on the front of
the book says, the stars are only the beginning. Here
is your guide to the universe of potential within us all.
And I know this was nineteen eighty four. You had
been doing astrology readings practice as an astrologer, but also
with your publisher at the time they discouraged you from
(03:05):
using the word souls. Talk to me a little bit
about the time in which this book was born and
published to the world where you were, but also what
was stirring behind some of the words in this book.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yes, yes, well that's a big question.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
It is a big question.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So let's see. I got the contract to write The
Inner Sky from Bantam Books in the year nineteen eighty one.
I was thirty two years old. I'd been a full
time astrologer for a few years at that point. My
work was always oriented towards the evolution of consciousness. That
(03:46):
was absolutely fundamental. I'd actually written a book earlier than that,
a story I don't need to tell necessarily, but it
was rejected. It was actually a book of statistics and
support of astrology, and I got one rejection letter that
I'll always remember. The thrust of modern astrological publishing is egocentric,
(04:08):
and I suspect it will remain that way, and that
attitude that if it wasn't kind of a stupid version
of me, me, me, you weren't going to sell anything.
So in writing The Inner Sky, I did the writing,
but I submit a chapter and get feedback from my editor.
And you know, it wasn't like I wasn't allowed to
(04:31):
use the word soul, but I should really downplay it.
This is, you know, early nineteen eighties. The crowning irony
is that within a very short number of years Thomas
Moore published The Care of the Soul and sold a
trillion copies of it or something like that. You know,
the Soul was about to become a marketable commodity. But
(04:54):
sad to say, but I.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Don't exactly sad to say, but very very poor.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, exactly. And so I was proud of theater skuy,
and a point of tremendous marvel and gratitude for me
now is that here many many years later, that came
out almost forty almost fifty years ago. Now, if I
were to rewrite it today, I wouldn't change much. There's
(05:21):
a couple of things I would handle a little bit differently.
I don't think I did a very good job of
Pluto in that book, and I could improve how I
handled the Ascendant. But other than that, you know, it's like, yeah,
I still agree with all that, and I just thank
the angels that I was guided in my lad of
(05:41):
immature years to be able to write something I would
still believe in at my age seventy four.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Absolutely thank you for sharing because I reference it, and
not so much that I don't know or understand the
characteristics and attributes around the planets and their personalities, the
house systems, the interplay between that. But I go back
to it because sometimes words for me, when I see
(06:10):
certain words, it triggers meaning or it again has something
very conscious for me where I resonate, and then it
opens up a new channel of exploration, meaning purpose, depth.
And that is so much of your work in evolutionary astrology.
Evolutionary astrology, the way I see it working, the way
(06:33):
I know that you have taught it is really this
interplay between the psychology of astrology and metaphysics, and where
those two meet the evolutions of ourselves, our soul, who
we are, and how our consciousness is growing, how we're contributing.
I feel like that was already happening early on for you,
(06:54):
and that's why I highlighted what's written on the front
of the book because to me, that already feels evolutionary,
and it was a different voice in astrology coming through
that was so needed, or you know, people were hungry
for that at the time. But will you talk a
little bit about evolutionary astrology and will battrack into the
birth chart and our planets at the moment of birth,
(07:18):
But I want to talk about evolutionary astrology first and
why that has become such an innate part of your
voice and your teaching, and it's your part of your meaning.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Your purpose starts off with that, a very very simple idea.
In fact, paraphrasing the first line of the first chapter
of the first book, I wrote, you know the inner sky.
People change, but one assumption runs like a virus through
modern astrological literature that people do not change. So we
(07:52):
have the standard still sentency to this day. Often the
current expectation that people have. It's like, I'm the astrologer,
so I'm going to describe your personality. And sometimes it
gets really silly, like you're a Gemini, so you talk
too much, and you're a Scorpio, so you're really sexy.
(08:12):
But I'm not crazy enough to trust you. And you know,
these kinds of teasing, kinds of lines that often contain
just a few grains of truth enough, you know, so
you think, well, you know, I can't completely dismiss this.
But the problem is not the triviality of it. The
problem is putting people in little boxes. And the simple
(08:37):
truth is we're not in little boxes. You know. One
of my favorite lines when I'm introducing these ideas, I'll
say to the audience, think how dumb you were ten
years ago, you know, And everybody laughs and nods their head.
You know, anybody, so I'm just as dumb today as
it was ten years ago. You know, we all feel
sorry for them. Of course, you're wiser now. You've had experience,
(09:00):
and it's not like in a little box labeled your
experience or your wisdom. It pervades your character, pervades your personality.
People change, and I found that fanning those flames was
what was exciting to me. I'll take it one step further.
You can take those silly descriptions of even sun signs
(09:22):
that all the Geminis talk too much, you know, and
you can find examples of that. But then you find
Gemini people who are really good listeners and can engage
in conversation where both people benefit, you know, partly because
they're listening and reflecting and offering intelligent responses. And that's
(09:44):
high Gemini. And so we can find good Geminis and
bad Gemini, so to speak. But the magical insight is
that maybe an astrologer can help a bad Gemini become
a better one, you know. That's so instead of the
signs and symbols of astrology being a little like prerecorded
(10:06):
behavioral patterns, they stick in your head. They are evolutionary
pathways that we can grow. And the chart talks about
how to grow the optimal path and most efficient methods
of soul growth. And I just found that exciting and
I've never let go of it all these years.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Thank you for that, because I found and I shared
this with you before we started recording, that I had
read the Inner Sky. I found your work years ago,
a decade ago, and then I ended up ordering my
Inner Sky report right and I have given that as
(10:46):
a gift to so many people. My half siblings. I've
given it as a gift because when I got the report,
and this is a birth chart report in natal report
that essentially describes the placement of the planets their house
position at the time of your birth, but it is
(11:10):
deeply psychological. It delves into something that's evolutionary. How can
I learn from this? What attributes do I get to
harness and which ones do I get to struggle with
and cultivate and heal. And I have read that report
and I go back to it probably once or twice
(11:31):
a year, just to remind myself of parts of how
I operate, how I function psychologically, because that's what that's
what I began to understand, is it. Astrology is so
psychological for me? And yes, you have the scientific aspects
and the astronomy, and we can talk about quantum mechanics
(11:53):
and how things work, but there is the psychology to
it that also goes to the evolutionary space of delving
into the metaphysics where it would pierce my soul. And
I remember, specifically for me personally, my mercury is in Scorpio.
It's in the fifth house. And there is a line
in my report that describes that and it says that
(12:16):
I enjoy a repartee with a quick witted raconteurs, whether
they're sitting across the table from me or floating off
the printed page. Make sure I don't miss the bliss
of pushing my intelligence towards its limits or else all
that energy will dissipate into a blither of vacuous words.
(12:39):
And the words were transcendent for me, but they were poignant,
and they were tangible and literal, and I could point
back to experiences where I had, you know, diminished my
creativity and fund through my you know, in diminishing my
intelligence or all of the insecurities that arise for many
(12:59):
of us around. I'm not smart enough or worthy any
of those dialogues that we have in our minds, but
I recognize for me, intelligence is something fun, it's playful.
It lights my fire. And also I could find poetry
through the written word or dialogues with people that enriched
(13:20):
me and that described what lit my fire intellectually and
inside my body. And those kinds of descriptions for me
helped me better understand myself. And that's what I want
to share with our listeners is if you're new to astrology.
(13:42):
If you've been, you know, if you have been in
the world of astrology using all of its capabilities and
tools to help you grow and evolve yourself. It's ever
changing and evolving. But I encourage you to start beginning
to dive into your birth astrology, your natal astrology, and
(14:02):
this report is one of the ways that you can
do that. And it's on your website, Stephen. You can
get that.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Report first Astrology. And I hate to do a product placement.
The correct title for what you're talking about is the Sky.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Within, the Sky Within exactly, And I have a question
for you about the Sky Within, and then the other report,
the you know, I read that progression report or the Skylog.
I have gotten a skylog for years and I go
by it and follow it, which is the dialogue between
the sky when we are born and the sky today
(14:41):
and our progressions a little deeper than that. But I
have a question for you because one of the things
that fascinates me is in creating that report that we
can go in generate and get pretty promptly. Those are
books within themselves that you wrote. Because it is deeply personal,
it can be applied in a multitude of combinations. With
(15:03):
people's natal astrology. When did you create that report and
how did that come about?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
That was a long long time ago now, late nineteen eighties,
shortly after The Inner Sky and the Changing Sky came out.
I was commissioned to create them by an astrological software
company called Matrix Software. I was paid a little bit
of money for writing it, and I was given the
(15:31):
ability to generate the reports. But they were basically selling
the report writer, and so anybody could buy that and
generate the reports, and nobody has any idea how many
millions of those things have been cranked out of which
I don't get a penny yo.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I know, and that's why I just want to give
you some energetic credit for this, because I have a
lot of reverence for the amount of work that goes
into that report. And then also, you know the Progressions Report,
which I've used for a long time. Will you talk
a little bit about our natal charts, our birth charts,
(16:09):
and then the sky today about progressive astrology and explain
that to our listeners so they understand the difference. Will
you talk a little bit about our natal charts, our
birth charts, and then the Sky today about progressive astrology?
(16:32):
And explain that to our listeners so they understand the difference.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So the basic document of astrology, the birth chart. It's
a map of the sky at the instant you took
your first breath, from the perspective of where you were born.
So something might be rising, something might be at the
high noon point. So there it is, that map of
the sky, and that's your path through this lifetime, cradle
to grave. I often think of it as the root day.
(17:00):
It's like we can get some sense of I don't
want to say we can see your future as if
it were all fixed, but we can see that certain
certain possibilities and certain questions are going to be in
your face over and over again in this lifetime, and
your answers, your responses can improve, you know, and we
can help you with all that, just through a meditation
(17:22):
upon that map of the sky. The next step points
move through that chart in a variety of ways. The
simplest one called transits the actual motion of the planets
in the sky. So right now, Saturn is in pieces.
If you're a Pisces, you know if your son is
in pieces, Saturn is going to hit your son sometimes
(17:44):
now or in the next couple of years. Well, Saturn
is passing through that sign and that will trigger the
development of the basic stuff of your pisce sun in
a Saturn way. Basically, discipline and maturation are going to
be the themes. Often obstacles arise, but if we wrestle
with them, they help us mature, we become better for them.
(18:08):
It's a big subject, but that's basically how it works.
The metaphor is irresistible. The planets move around and press
your buttons, you know, and kind of put planets in
your chart in the spotlight. Just take it a step further.
Transit too easy to understand where the planets actually are.
There are a couple of other methods that are more
(18:28):
like an internal biological clock in your chart. The simple
way to say it called progressions and solar arcs. But
bottom line, they also generate points that move around and
put the spotlight on certain pieces of your puzzle. When
I'm teaching my students, invariably the hardest thing for them
(18:51):
is learning transits and progressions because you have to understand
the birth chart, which is hard enough, and then what's
going on top of it. From a technical point of view,
that's the hardest kind of astrology, but as a human being,
as a consumer of the bottom line astrology, which is
just to say life. It makes it easier because your
(19:14):
birth chart is multi dimensional. There's a lot going on
in it, a lot of contracts that you've signed, you know,
in this birth, and then the universe comes along and
helps and says, you know about your venus, don't worry
about it. This year, we're going to focus on your moon,
you know. But right we're going to put this in
(19:34):
the spotlight. You can put the rest on the back burner,
and then maybe next year we're going to look at
your venus. That's a bit of an oversimplification, but it
basically makes it easier to be human. Harder to be
an astrologer, but easier to be human. To have transits and.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Progressions, absolutely, and I have found that, you know, over
the years, being able to look at the transits and progressions,
and essentially it arms me with information and knowledge and
insight to respond better. Doesn't mean that I don't react
and I don't mess up, but usually the knowledge that
(20:12):
comes through that I am able to recognize what the
opportunities for growth are or the lessons I remember when
I went through some Pluto squares, and it was three passes.
It was intense. I had a couple of sad and
traumatic incidents happen, and in that time I was very
(20:34):
engrossed in what was going on astrologically, so it wasn't
a surprise. Of course, the way things unfolded were a surprise,
but my response even though I got to grieve and
feel pain and have all of the myriad of human emotions,
I also got to see things differently. I got to grow.
(20:55):
And one of the things that happened in that timeframe
I go back to most directly is I had two Labradors,
two Labrador Retrievers, and we had a terrible accident and
my husband ran over one of our dogs in front
of the other dog and I And it was a
sheer accident, you know, I mean, it was what we
we opened the gate, we did our normal routine, and
(21:18):
it was one of the and I held her in
my arms and my other dog was what his sister,
you know, it was watching. It was one of those
moments and I remember, and I knew my Pluto's squares
were going on, and that it you know, Pluto being
about transformation, death, rebirth, and a square being a point
of tension and growth. And I remember in that moment thinking,
(21:43):
I mean, in this terrifying, tragic moment, I wasn't angry.
I mean, and that that was you know, anger like
why would you do this? Why did that happen? I
didn't feel anger. There was this element of all of
this is a divine up because it is time for
her to leave. There are things that I am needing
(22:04):
to grieve and process. There's vulnerabilities that should maybe need
to be shared. And there was this peace when she died,
and it was a peaceful death, even though it was
tragic in the accident itself. And for me, astrology spoke
to me and I again, I didn't know what was
(22:25):
going to happen, but that was one. That's one illustration
of how the transits, the progressions can equip us in
ways to look at things from a growth an evolutionary perspective.
How am I evolving? What am I needing to heal
shed transform in order to continue forward even through pain
(22:50):
or tragedy?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yes, yes, beautiful in a fierce kind of way.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That's yeah. Well, And I will tell you this. I
was born on a Libra new moon and Pluto was
conjunct my new moon. So I am very no wonder.
I said, I love the Book of Pluto because I'm
Plutonian by nature. With this, you know, librin beauty, harmony,
balanced justice thing and it's it's confusing at times and complex,
(23:20):
but that those are things that I know about myself.
And that's what I want people to hear is Astrology
is this incredible support system to better understand our developing
meaning and purpose, how we're evolving, how we get to
grow and really become the happier, highest versions of ourselves,
(23:43):
even in difficult circumstances. Doesn't mean that we bypass or
dismiss but that's the gift that it is given to me,
and so much of your work has done that. Let
me jump to another topic that fascinates me and you
can speak to much better. Better is the area of
astronomy and the sciences quantum physics, quantum entanglement and how
(24:09):
when we look up at the night sky and it's
luminous and vast and fascinating, but there's actual there are
electromagnetic frequencies that are interacting with us. And when I
talk to people, I say, well, you know, our bodies
are made up of ninety some odd percent water, and
the moon affects the tides. That's my simple go to
(24:31):
of how you know the moon affects us? We are
watery and it affects the tides. So don't you think
it impacts us? But speak to that more eloquently and
a little bit deeper in terms of how we physiologically
interact with the sky. The planets is one.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Of my favorite questions. Here's my scorpio, send it. My
area's moon might show here a little bit. Astrology often
gets attacked obviously, you know the reputation of astrologers says
ditsy and gullible. And I love this more than I should.
Where I'm at some kind of social gathering and somebody
(25:11):
thinks I'm going to be a really easy target, you know,
because I'm an astrologer.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
And will you fool them? Because you watch out, Stephen
is not an easy target.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Here's how I have them for dinner. You know, somebody
comes up and you know, well, you know, we now
know that the planets are millions and millions of miles away,
how could they possibly have any effect upon us? I said, well,
thank you, So I have I have a one two punch,
and I want to I want to show both of
these punches. First one is a dirty punch, but it's
(25:44):
sort of fun anyway goes.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
We got to be a little snarky, hey ye.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
With your mercury and scorpio and my Mars mercury conjunction.
We might have to put a trigger warning on this podcast.
But one, two punch. Here's the first bunch. The planets
are millions of miles away, how can they affect us?
And then I get this incredulous look, and I say,
you go out at night and you look at the
(26:11):
sky and that doesn't affect you. No, it's like you
poor in sense. Yes, I mean it's a dirty punch,
but it's not totally dirty. There's a poetic dimension to astrology.
The heart reacts to the sky and we have to
(26:31):
really numb something in ourselves to not feel that. Well,
that's first punch. Here's the second punch, and there's more
science side. Go outside at night and look in the
sky and there's what appears to be a bright star
Like tonight, we could go out, if it's clear, look
to the west and there's beautiful venus, you know, hanging
(26:51):
up there in the sky. Not too far from the
moon right now, and you think, what's happening. You've got energy,
and I'm talking electromagnetic energy, not hippie energy, but you
know electron yes energy.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
And hippie energy too, Steven, hippie energy and electrocog exactly,
I'm going to start out. We will go with the
hippie energy and the electromagnetic forces. We will take you
and I will take more.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Than this or us, for sure. But if I'm talking
to a skeptic, you know, I want to leave that out.
So I'll even say that lie about hippie energy because
I want to. I want to really emphasize that astrology
can make a stand for itself in the realm of
scientific assumptions. It's bigger than that, but it's not helpless there.
(27:38):
And so here's how I do it. So you take
a look. There's that bright star. It's actually Venus. You've
got energy coming from the cloud deck of Venus at
one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second, crashing
into your retina and creating measurable biochemical changes in your cerebrum,
(28:01):
which is just a fancy academic way of saying we
can see it and the idea that the planets don't
affect us is simply incorrect. You know, we can be
that dogmatic about it. If they didn't affect us, we
wouldn't know they were there. And the premise upon which
astrology rests bringing us into the wonderful world of hippie energy,
(28:25):
we interact with the solar system in more complex ways
than through our eyes. We can easily demonstrate through the eyes.
And then I usually follow it up by saying, and
any open minded person hearing that would say, show me
what you've got. You know, it's not proof, but show
(28:45):
me what you've got.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
You know, tell me more, Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Tell me more. Anybody doesn't say that they've just demonstrated
bigotry and closed mindedness. Yes.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And Carl Young, who used was so so fascinated by
and in astrology. I know with many of his patients
he used a natal chart. He wanted to look at
their natal chart before accepting them as a patient, which
I see today in more modern therapist and psychologists. And
(29:18):
I find that, of course helpful for me when I'm
seeking counsel and guidance if they can also speak in
the language of astrology or numerology, whatever tools they have
they can bring to the table. But he saw that
years ago.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I had just the incredible good fortune of being
good friends with Robert A. Johnson, who a pretty well
known Jungian writer. I happen to live in this little
desert town where I live, and we became really close
friends in the last years of his life, and Robert
studied directly with Carl Jung. He told me that doctor Young,
(29:58):
that's what he always called him. Doctor Jung had told
Robert that he never would work with a patient without
looking at their astrological chart, you know, never.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
This is so rich in terms of the history, and
of course we can go back to Galileo and I
think back to these philosophers and scientists and how they
have looked to the stars for as long as man
and woman has drawn breaths the nice sky. And intertwining
(30:32):
the science with the soul, with consciousness, with our path
of growth or evolution brings this course of study together
so poignantly but also relatably for me, because I get evidence,
and then I get to look at the evidence in
my life when I see when a big transit is
coming or there's a shift, I can make correlations, and
(30:55):
if it's a positive one and I miss the mark.
You know, if I've got a Jupiter trance, and you
know as as we all look at it and say,
you've got to you got to meet the universe a
little bit of the way. You've got to take the
leap of faith and have that faith over fear, and
then you may get the reward, the recognition whatever Jupiter
(31:16):
is expanding or touching at the time. It's just fascinating.
We can go in many directions. I want to ask
you right now today. And I know you have a
you know, a long client list. You don't see personal
clients anymore because your list is backed up so many years,
and you.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
I'm trying to catch up with the promises I've made.
I still do quite a lot of personal astrological just
not edding anybody else to.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Not adding anybody to the list, which is a great boundary,
a great boundary. And then you and fulfilling the commitments
you have and with your teaching. But what are you
working on right now that feels evolutionary to you? Where
are you put your edges? What are you curious about?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Life has dished up an opportunity for me to learn
a lot about teamwork, and that's something I've fortunately never
had to learn much about. You know. I've tended to
be my own boss, you know that, and you know,
captain of my soul. But over the last few years,
I've become involved in two projects that are too big
(32:26):
for me to do alone. One of them is my
school and the other is is actually an evolution out
of the sky within in skylog that we were talking
about earlier. It's a cell phone app called Leila. It's
currently available in a kind of early version for free.
It's on iPhones androids. We'll get to androids sooner or later.
(32:51):
Leila l I l a relate deeper and you know,
you can go right to the app and it basically,
you know, will analyze a birth yard. It'll look at
the current transits where we're adding a thing about relationships,
how to help a given relationship. It's going to it's
quite elaborate. I've been working on it for five years
(33:11):
and it's way beyond my own I'm doing the writing,
but it's the computer side of it is way beyond me.
So teamwork. And then then my school, the Forest Center
for Evolutionary Astrology, another product placement forest Astrology dot Center
not not not dot com, but dot center gets people there.
(33:32):
And we've got a couple hundred people enrolled and it's
a three or four year program, depending on how fast people
want to go all online and UH it'll take somebody
from uh from zero if that's where they are, to
uh professional ability as an astrologer.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
In three or four years, we'll train thousands of astrologers
and equipping people with the tools and the knowledge and
the insights to be able to support others in this.
And I just was curious, and I of course I'm
eager now to check out this app, but excited to
hear that you're working on it, and I again very
(34:11):
much respect that you've been working on it for years
because of these reports that you created, I have a
lot of reverence for the attention to detail and the
thoughtfulness and accuracy in which you know the standard you hold,
and so I want, I'm wanting to share all of
these resources with people so they know, at whatever level
(34:33):
they're coming in, you offer a multitude of places for
people to feel supported and to learn and expand their
enrich their curiosities as well as their theirselves with astrology
and metaphysics, and I want to talk a little bit
(34:56):
about the hippie side of things and consciousness and energy.
For me, astrology has been a massive gateway into the
development of am my intuition, my psychic abilities, trusting my voice,
my truth because when I have the knowledge about better
knowledge about who I am or why I might behave
(35:18):
the way I do, then I become clearer in my
obstacles or my brilliant abstributes, whatever that may be. Will
you talk a little bit about the development of intuition
alongside of astrology and how astrology can support those extra
(35:40):
sensory abilities that we downplay and are underdeveloped, because that
is such a critical part of evolving activating DNA dormant
brain frequencies that where to me right now. If you
were to say what is on your heart, I would
(36:00):
say this intersection between artificial intelligence and human intelligence and
how we have the information within. It's all a matter
of accessing it, and astrology has been a critical tool
for me in developing cultivating my intuition. How would you
respond to that and what are your insights?
Speaker 2 (36:20):
It's again a big subject. I want to start off
by saying this is more true some years ago than
it is today, fortunately, But when astrology was a little
more dubious in people's minds our star is rising. But
I would do a reading for somebody and they would
you could see they really wanted to own the reading.
(36:43):
You know, it was helpful to them, but they didn't
want the stigma of becoming somebody who believed in astrology.
So I put a bit of a dilemma and I
would get this. This happened many times, this kind of
conspiratorial glance from the client. It's like, you're you're pretty psychic,
aren't you, And you know, and I could see the trap,
(37:05):
you know, It's like they wanted me to say that
so they could dismiss astrology but still own the reading.
And I was going to fall for that trap. So
I said, no, you know now, and I guess you
we're all a little psychic. But I've had enough bizarrely
(37:25):
psychic experiences where I would generate a metaphor in my mind,
some just some random image to get something across, and
like the most dramatic one, that God was hitting me
over the head with this. I had had to invent
the hypothetically the last four letters of somebody's social Security
(37:45):
number and the pressing right eye and my social security
numbers in my charge. It's I'm really not trying to
toot my horror. I don't experience myself as a psychic.
I experienced myself as a good astrologer. Like most humans.
I've had some amazing, miraculous moments, but I can conjure
(38:08):
them up at will and pick the horse that's going
to win the race, or you know, that's not something
I can do. But I've come to realize that as
we study astrology, we're somehow putting our consciousness in harmony
with the basic structure of the universe. Because the basic
structure of the universe, at least as it's reflected in
(38:31):
human consciousness, is astrological. And that when we do that,
when we practice that meditation, over many years of studying
and practicing astrology, we do seem to become more psychic.
You know. It just seems to be almost like an
unintentional and onsung and glorious side effect of the practice
(38:53):
of astrology. It does hone your intuition. If you'll give
me one more minute, there's one piece that I would
like to put on the table, back to the initial imagery.
You know, Oh you're pretty psychic. Somebody's trying to dismiss. Well,
here's a response to that. And in effect, it's something
you've already brought up the sky within, you know, report writers.
(39:18):
That's purely machine driven, mechanical astrology. That's astrological theory as
it can be understood in a logical, academic way, applied
to specific situations. No room for anything psychic. It's just
a machine doing it and it works. It works like crazy.
So astrology is a science and it can stand on
(39:42):
its own two feet there. But if you practice it,
you're intuitive, and psychic functions do get involved and they're
very welcome, you know, they make it a better experience.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
That for me just encapsulates what I couldn't articulate is
the science of astrology and the practice of it is
where there is this intersection and interconnection. And it to
me sometimes when I think of that visually, I think
about the yin and the yang and that point in
which the black turns into white and the white turns
(40:16):
into black. It's that beautiful balance that we can't quite pinpoint,
and for me, that's where that intersection is. And oftentimes,
you know, like I was saying, I can be reading
something and have those transcendent aha moments that click within
my soul, and it creates this cohesion, this cohesive dialogue
(40:38):
between this vast, ever expanding universe and this universe that
is available to me within. And that's how deeply I
see it and feel about it. But also again incorporating
the science with the emotional and psychological and energetic, hippie energetic,
however you wanted to look at it, hippie energetic components.
(41:02):
And I mean, I tell you what you know, God
was laughing when he pushed you off the cosmic diving board.
As you say, you've said that, and it's one of
my favorite cheeky lines. God laughed and said, hey, go
down there and have a good time and be kind,
you know, have fun, be kind, but make a difference,
make a difference, make a splash. And it's like what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Now, there's always the fingerprint of the unresolved karma on
the present life that we will always see some connection
with it. And there be many details here. Of course,
I don't know about you, but there's one detail I
do know, where you have karma with weird unexpected that's
aquarius death. That's the athouse, your poor dog, and that
(41:50):
shocking story. That is a classic manifestation of the energetic
fingerprint of this unresolved kroma, you know, around sudden, unexpected death.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
And I lost my father at eighteen years old. He
had a cardiac event in our home. I watched him
very tragically. My mother just died about five months ago,
but I got to take care of her through the
last leg of her journey, which was beautiful and painful alike,
because it brought up old wounds, old things. So I'm
very familiar with death. I worked in my old life,
(42:28):
I worked in hospice and health care, and it's a
very familiar place to me. And getting to respond to
it with the diplomacy that you mentioned, the tact, the kindness,
rather than the angry, rebellious elements that that are in
my karma, I'm getting to do it differently, and also
(42:51):
seeing death as this extension of life and what we know,
you know, and also you know, the soul just leaves
the physical body and goes on to other things, infinite things.
I want to go back to the artificial intelligence thing
because one of the things that I am curious to
ask you about our astrology, evolutionary astrology and being better people,
(43:20):
doing things differently, making a contribution personally, interpersonally, you know,
in the in the bigger picture. So many people that
I engage with they're looking for meaning, they're looking for
a purpose, They're they're seeking and searching because there's this
lack of fulfillment. And and you wrote your your blog
(43:42):
that you did a couple a couple of months ago
or so, you know, on the entrance of Saturn into
Pisces and our opportunities and lessons and how to navigate that.
It was it was beautifully written. And I'll make sure
that I make reference to your blog when we post this,
because we're in this phase where Saturn is in Pisces
and we get to implement new spiritual tools practices, whatever
(44:05):
that may look like for you personally, whether it's like
you said, going enjoying you know, a great fishing trip
and seeing a sunrise and having the peace of the lake,
or it is a deep meditation practice astrology. Will you
talk a little bit as we wrap up about Saturn
in Pisces and why this gets to be such a
(44:28):
rich time of spiritual explanation, exploration and of course, the
north node of the Moon moving into Aries, the individual
and the I am and taking authority for the self,
but also the pitfalls, the blind spots of maybe both
the north node moving into Aries and Saturn in Pisces.
It is a to me, there is tremendous opportunity for
(44:51):
growth and tremendous opportunity for wreckage. Now with this dialogue, so.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Let's focus on the higher ground. And if we get
to the higher ground, we won't have to worry about
the wreckage, you know. Okay, So with the north Noe
moving into Aries, there's a word that's often used negatively
and we need to turn it around and see it's
got a positive side. And that word is selfishness. I
like to think of positive areas as let's say, enlightened selfishness,
(45:24):
you know, so it's not just being mean and not thinking.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Well, you do have an Aries moon, so we know
you're going to champion the hard.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
We get along pretty well.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Absolutely, But that I think of the selfishness as like
a capital S and not exclamation point ego, more like
the soul, the self, that bigger part of yourself, the
mighty I am versus the little scared ego.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
You have a right to live the life you need
to live. You know, you have a right to act
upon the dictates of your soul. And if others disapprove
of that or are sometimes inconvenienced by you being true
to your spiritual path, well that's all right. You know
you can you can eat that up and still be
true to yourself. So that's you know, in a couple
(46:09):
of lines, a healthy response over the next year and
a half or so to the areas North note, it's
true for everybody, and we're trying to get away from
Libra South note stuff, which a big subject. Reduce it
to two words, polite dishonesty, you know, just ready to
get rid of that and replace it with this enlightened selfishness.
(46:33):
Now integrating that with Saturn being in Pisces, we could
integrate it with a lot of other things, but that's
when you add so Saturn at its best likes discipline.
You know, it's like, I'm going to take this seriously,
I'm going to do this right. I'm going to do
my best. It's motivated now by Pisces, since it's in prices,
(46:57):
and so doing my best in Icey's fashion, which you
might say, is spiritual fashion. And so I could imagine
someone who's aware of awareness, you know, a person who's
on the spiritual path who feels, you know, I need,
I need six weeks alone on a mountaintop, remember my soul,
(47:21):
to meditate, to be away from the dramas of my life.
Six weeks alone on a mountaintop. And so turn to
the family. Gee, I would like to abdicate from all
my responsibilities for the next six weeks. Oh and by
the way, take a bite out of the family budget,
so aford to be on the mountaintop, see you and
the family of course, no, no, no, no no. And
(47:43):
that's where the enlightened selfishness comes in. It's like, sorry,
I'm going to do this, I need to do this,
and okay, you're called selfish. Then you get to the
mountaintop for six weeks. You get to the mountaintop for
six hours, and you're up there and you're wondering, what
am I doing here? You know this is going to
(48:04):
be boring because spiritual work is challenging. It's difficult. You know,
it's not about becoming this bliss and any you know,
with a smile on your face. For six weeks. You know,
you're confronting your own soul, and Saturn likes that hard work.
And then back to areas. It takes courage areas to
(48:26):
do that Saturn work. And so somewhere there's a person
whose life I've just described. You know that that's the situation.
Obviously that doesn't apply to everybody on the planet, but
those principles are being forceful, courageous, and assertive enough to
do what you know you need to do for the
(48:48):
care of your own soul. Everybody is ready for a
big pulse of spiritual maturation. I ses Saturn.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Spiritual spiritual maturation, and domatically it happens no will and discipline,
which says Saturn loves, is repetition, discipline, dedication, And that's
where so many folks I talk to. You know, No,
I want the pill the out. You know that, Just
(49:17):
give me a pill and make it all work. No,
You've got we We get to repeat this stuff, We
get to practice, We get to create a framework that
works for us. However poetic it is, it is just
consistently engaging in some sort of spiritually enriching, personally developmental
practice that feeds your soul and spirit is where so
(49:40):
much of the window of opportunity is in these upcoming
couple of years. And that, of course, as you and
I just said, is one one thing that's going a
couple of things that are going on in the sky today.
And so I hope that gives people a taste of
how we can look at astrology. And I'll relate it
back person in in closing up this this part of
(50:02):
the discussion is for me, I've been in recovery for years,
and of course there is a framework to recovery and
the twelve steps and and everything, and after my mom's
death and her passing, and you know, last year being
one of those years where it was like, okay, I
felt like the actor managing the play, you know, managing
(50:23):
the show, going back into not you know, having God
at the center of things, that all of that the
tools that I know, once I got a little breath
in space, I said, I got to get back down
to basics. I need to jump back into my recovery,
get back in the middle, do do the work that
I don't necessarily want to do. But when I do it,
a light turns on. It's enriching, there's clarity and prioritizing that,
(50:46):
and that's a way that all of a sudden, when
Saturn moved into Pisces, I knew it was either escapism,
I'm just gonna zone out, or I'm going to engage.
And fortunately I've been enriched in those tools and resources
a long time and am very fortunate around that. Part
of my story and the near death experiences go to
(51:09):
I shouldn't I live on borrowed time, you know, through
my own mischief and problems that are of my own making,
through alcoholism and addiction years back. I live on borrowed time,
and sometimes suit it up, showed up, made the decision
to do the work, and everything started to change. But
we go through phases or cycles, and this one with Pisces,
(51:32):
Saturn and Pisces, it was one of those times where
it said, suit up, show up, do the spiritual and
personal work, and you will see the traction, the rewards,
the growth, the piece, the happiness, all the rewards. So
I'm just encouraging anyone out there to recognize how astrology
(51:54):
evolutionary astrology, Starting to learn about this, utilizing it in
conversation and dialogue with yourself and your psychology, it keeps evolving,
it's enriching. It is a toolkit that, from my experience,
is an invaluable one and one that I feel like
(52:15):
I've had through lifetimes. We know that you have for
thousands of lifetimes. But having your voice and your wisdom
and your intelligence coming today to share all of these
deep insights and knowledge is such a gift. And I'm
not only grateful to talk to you, but I'm humbled
and then fascinated. So it's what it's wonderful. I really
(52:38):
appreciate coming on. Is there anything that you want to
close with or leave with everyone as we as we
wrap up, just.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
One, one simple thing. If I knew nothing about you
except for that aquarium self note in the ape house,
I would say you're in recovery.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
So was that because you're super psychic or just some
of my language.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
With mechanical astrology, you.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Know mechanical astrology, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
Yeah, yeah, And we need more than mechanical. But that's
the piece of it. That's a pro triumatized self note.
And you brought the brutal tool into the world to
look into it to find the librin piece that comes
as a result of the of the hard inner work
of healing.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
And you know what it took is that beautiful acronym
for God, the gift of desperation. A decade ago, when
I said I can't do this anymore, I can't do
it alone. I need help. That get that acronym for God,
the gift of desperation, and something shot through me and
my life was forever changed, you know, even with the
(53:44):
consequences of my actions and the story, but it just
became part of my essence and then also part of
my routine, my lifestyle. So and it's part of my astrology,
which I'm fulfilling. And thank goodness, I'm here to tell
the story. Still you survived, I survived. Well. Thank you
so much for being the all today. Everyone well I everyone.
(54:08):
I encourage you Stephen his books or of course they
are books that you want to buy, not just on kindle.
You want to get them, and if you're like me,
underline and highlight and take notes the reports that we referenced.
I'll be sure to put links to these things in
the podcast description so you can easily navigate. But this
(54:30):
is a wonderful place to start, or a wonderful place
to pick up, and a divine time to do it
as well, so I encourage you all, thank you for
joining us, and be well.
Speaker 2 (54:40):
Thank you,
Hi, everyone, It's Amanda Rieger Green. Welcome to Soul Sessions.
I have an exceptional guest today that I am eager
to share with you, Stephen Forrest. Welcome Stephen, Thank you,
it's good to be here. It's great to connect with
you virtually. Stephen Forrest is an American astrologer, writer, and lecturer.
(00:31):
He is the author of nearly a dozen astrological books
and the founders of one of the founders of the
School of Evolutionary Astrology. Some of his books include The
Inner Sky, The Changing Sky, The Night Speaks, The Book
of Pluto, one of my favorites, Yesterday's Sky, Astrology, and Reincarnation.
(00:51):
But also, apart from his body of work and involvement
in various scientific and academic institutions astrological groups, he also
gets a tremendous amount of praise from the pop culture arena.
So I want to make note of that, and I
actually want to quote a couple of notable pop culture
(01:13):
folks who have commentary on Stephen that I think that
resonate deeply with me. Sting. Sting says that Stephen manages
to disarm the skeptic as well as debunk the Charlatan
that surrounds popular astrology with language that is intelligent, cogent,
and poetic. Oprah magen Seine has described Stephen as stopping
(01:37):
the blame game in its tracks, We're Warriors for filling
our turbulent evolutionary path. And one other quote that I
love because it really resonates with me is from Robert
Downey Junior. I marvel at the accuracy of Stephen's readings.
He insists that nothing is so grave as to be
beyond repair, and correspond that there is no rainbow that
(02:02):
won't be evaporated by poor judgment in the now so
high praise and acclaims, but you also get them for me.
Welcome Stephen again, and I'm excited to introduce you to
our listeners, but also reintroduce you to those who have
been touched by your work and your writing and your teachings.
(02:23):
One of the things I want to start with is
your very first book in was It nineteen eighty four,
nineteen eighty six, nineteen eighty four four The Inner Sky.
I've got my copy here. It's dog eared, well loved
and read. What I find incredible is I feel like
you set the stage with this book for your work
(02:43):
in evolutionary astrology, and the quote on the front of
the book says, the stars are only the beginning. Here
is your guide to the universe of potential within us all.
And I know this was nineteen eighty four. You had
been doing astrology readings practice as an astrologer, but also
with your publisher at the time they discouraged you from
(03:05):
using the word souls. Talk to me a little bit
about the time in which this book was born and
published to the world where you were, but also what
was stirring behind some of the words in this book.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yes, yes, well that's a big question.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
It is a big question.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So let's see. I got the contract to write The
Inner Sky from Bantam Books in the year nineteen eighty one.
I was thirty two years old. I'd been a full
time astrologer for a few years at that point. My
work was always oriented towards the evolution of consciousness. That
(03:46):
was absolutely fundamental. I'd actually written a book earlier than that,
a story I don't need to tell necessarily, but it
was rejected. It was actually a book of statistics and
support of astrology, and I got one rejection letter that
I'll always remember. The thrust of modern astrological publishing is egocentric,
(04:08):
and I suspect it will remain that way, and that
attitude that if it wasn't kind of a stupid version
of me, me, me, you weren't going to sell anything.
So in writing The Inner Sky, I did the writing,
but I submit a chapter and get feedback from my editor.
And you know, it wasn't like I wasn't allowed to
(04:31):
use the word soul, but I should really downplay it.
This is, you know, early nineteen eighties. The crowning irony
is that within a very short number of years Thomas
Moore published The Care of the Soul and sold a
trillion copies of it or something like that. You know,
the Soul was about to become a marketable commodity. But
(04:54):
sad to say, but I.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Don't exactly sad to say, but very very poor.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, exactly. And so I was proud of theater skuy,
and a point of tremendous marvel and gratitude for me
now is that here many many years later, that came
out almost forty almost fifty years ago. Now, if I
were to rewrite it today, I wouldn't change much. There's
(05:21):
a couple of things I would handle a little bit differently.
I don't think I did a very good job of
Pluto in that book, and I could improve how I
handled the Ascendant. But other than that, you know, it's like, yeah,
I still agree with all that, and I just thank
the angels that I was guided in my lad of
(05:41):
immature years to be able to write something I would
still believe in at my age seventy four.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Absolutely thank you for sharing because I reference it, and
not so much that I don't know or understand the
characteristics and attributes around the planets and their personalities, the
house systems, the interplay between that. But I go back
to it because sometimes words for me, when I see
(06:10):
certain words, it triggers meaning or it again has something
very conscious for me where I resonate, and then it
opens up a new channel of exploration, meaning purpose, depth.
And that is so much of your work in evolutionary astrology.
Evolutionary astrology, the way I see it working, the way
(06:33):
I know that you have taught it is really this
interplay between the psychology of astrology and metaphysics, and where
those two meet the evolutions of ourselves, our soul, who
we are, and how our consciousness is growing, how we're contributing.
I feel like that was already happening early on for you,
(06:54):
and that's why I highlighted what's written on the front
of the book because to me, that already feels evolutionary,
and it was a different voice in astrology coming through
that was so needed, or you know, people were hungry
for that at the time. But will you talk a
little bit about evolutionary astrology and will battrack into the
birth chart and our planets at the moment of birth,
(07:18):
But I want to talk about evolutionary astrology first and
why that has become such an innate part of your
voice and your teaching, and it's your part of your meaning.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Your purpose starts off with that, a very very simple idea.
In fact, paraphrasing the first line of the first chapter
of the first book, I wrote, you know the inner sky.
People change, but one assumption runs like a virus through
modern astrological literature that people do not change. So we
(07:52):
have the standard still sentency to this day. Often the
current expectation that people have. It's like, I'm the astrologer,
so I'm going to describe your personality. And sometimes it
gets really silly, like you're a Gemini, so you talk
too much, and you're a Scorpio, so you're really sexy.
(08:12):
But I'm not crazy enough to trust you. And you know,
these kinds of teasing, kinds of lines that often contain
just a few grains of truth enough, you know, so
you think, well, you know, I can't completely dismiss this.
But the problem is not the triviality of it. The
problem is putting people in little boxes. And the simple
(08:37):
truth is we're not in little boxes. You know. One
of my favorite lines when I'm introducing these ideas, I'll
say to the audience, think how dumb you were ten
years ago, you know, And everybody laughs and nods their head.
You know, anybody, so I'm just as dumb today as
it was ten years ago. You know, we all feel
sorry for them. Of course, you're wiser now. You've had experience,
(09:00):
and it's not like in a little box labeled your
experience or your wisdom. It pervades your character, pervades your personality.
People change, and I found that fanning those flames was
what was exciting to me. I'll take it one step further.
You can take those silly descriptions of even sun signs
(09:22):
that all the Geminis talk too much, you know, and
you can find examples of that. But then you find
Gemini people who are really good listeners and can engage
in conversation where both people benefit, you know, partly because
they're listening and reflecting and offering intelligent responses. And that's
(09:44):
high Gemini. And so we can find good Geminis and
bad Gemini, so to speak. But the magical insight is
that maybe an astrologer can help a bad Gemini become
a better one, you know. That's so instead of the
signs and symbols of astrology being a little like prerecorded
(10:06):
behavioral patterns, they stick in your head. They are evolutionary
pathways that we can grow. And the chart talks about
how to grow the optimal path and most efficient methods
of soul growth. And I just found that exciting and
I've never let go of it all these years.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Thank you for that, because I found and I shared
this with you before we started recording, that I had
read the Inner Sky. I found your work years ago,
a decade ago, and then I ended up ordering my
Inner Sky report right and I have given that as
(10:46):
a gift to so many people. My half siblings. I've
given it as a gift because when I got the report,
and this is a birth chart report in natal report
that essentially describes the placement of the planets their house
position at the time of your birth, but it is
(11:10):
deeply psychological. It delves into something that's evolutionary. How can
I learn from this? What attributes do I get to
harness and which ones do I get to struggle with
and cultivate and heal. And I have read that report
and I go back to it probably once or twice
(11:31):
a year, just to remind myself of parts of how
I operate, how I function psychologically, because that's what that's
what I began to understand, is it. Astrology is so
psychological for me? And yes, you have the scientific aspects
and the astronomy, and we can talk about quantum mechanics
(11:53):
and how things work, but there is the psychology to
it that also goes to the evolutionary space of delving
into the metaphysics where it would pierce my soul. And
I remember, specifically for me personally, my mercury is in Scorpio.
It's in the fifth house. And there is a line
in my report that describes that and it says that
(12:16):
I enjoy a repartee with a quick witted raconteurs, whether
they're sitting across the table from me or floating off
the printed page. Make sure I don't miss the bliss
of pushing my intelligence towards its limits or else all
that energy will dissipate into a blither of vacuous words.
(12:39):
And the words were transcendent for me, but they were poignant,
and they were tangible and literal, and I could point
back to experiences where I had, you know, diminished my
creativity and fund through my you know, in diminishing my
intelligence or all of the insecurities that arise for many
(12:59):
of us around. I'm not smart enough or worthy any
of those dialogues that we have in our minds, but
I recognize for me, intelligence is something fun, it's playful.
It lights my fire. And also I could find poetry
through the written word or dialogues with people that enriched
(13:20):
me and that described what lit my fire intellectually and
inside my body. And those kinds of descriptions for me
helped me better understand myself. And that's what I want
to share with our listeners is if you're new to astrology.
(13:42):
If you've been, you know, if you have been in
the world of astrology using all of its capabilities and
tools to help you grow and evolve yourself. It's ever
changing and evolving. But I encourage you to start beginning
to dive into your birth astrology, your natal astrology, and
(14:02):
this report is one of the ways that you can
do that. And it's on your website, Stephen. You can
get that.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Report first Astrology. And I hate to do a product placement.
The correct title for what you're talking about is the Sky.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Within, the Sky Within exactly, And I have a question
for you about the Sky Within, and then the other report,
the you know, I read that progression report or the Skylog.
I have gotten a skylog for years and I go
by it and follow it, which is the dialogue between
the sky when we are born and the sky today
(14:41):
and our progressions a little deeper than that. But I
have a question for you because one of the things
that fascinates me is in creating that report that we
can go in generate and get pretty promptly. Those are
books within themselves that you wrote. Because it is deeply personal,
it can be applied in a multitude of combinations. With
(15:03):
people's natal astrology. When did you create that report and
how did that come about?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
That was a long long time ago now, late nineteen eighties,
shortly after The Inner Sky and the Changing Sky came out.
I was commissioned to create them by an astrological software
company called Matrix Software. I was paid a little bit
of money for writing it, and I was given the
(15:31):
ability to generate the reports. But they were basically selling
the report writer, and so anybody could buy that and
generate the reports, and nobody has any idea how many
millions of those things have been cranked out of which
I don't get a penny yo.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I know, and that's why I just want to give
you some energetic credit for this, because I have a
lot of reverence for the amount of work that goes
into that report. And then also, you know the Progressions Report,
which I've used for a long time. Will you talk
a little bit about our natal charts, our birth charts,
(16:09):
and then the sky today about progressive astrology and explain
that to our listeners so they understand the difference. Will
you talk a little bit about our natal charts, our
birth charts, and then the Sky today about progressive astrology?
(16:32):
And explain that to our listeners so they understand the difference.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So the basic document of astrology, the birth chart. It's
a map of the sky at the instant you took
your first breath, from the perspective of where you were born.
So something might be rising, something might be at the
high noon point. So there it is, that map of
the sky, and that's your path through this lifetime, cradle
to grave. I often think of it as the root day.
(17:00):
It's like we can get some sense of I don't
want to say we can see your future as if
it were all fixed, but we can see that certain
certain possibilities and certain questions are going to be in
your face over and over again in this lifetime, and
your answers, your responses can improve, you know, and we
can help you with all that, just through a meditation
(17:22):
upon that map of the sky. The next step points
move through that chart in a variety of ways. The
simplest one called transits the actual motion of the planets
in the sky. So right now, Saturn is in pieces.
If you're a Pisces, you know if your son is
in pieces, Saturn is going to hit your son sometimes
(17:44):
now or in the next couple of years. Well, Saturn
is passing through that sign and that will trigger the
development of the basic stuff of your pisce sun in
a Saturn way. Basically, discipline and maturation are going to
be the themes. Often obstacles arise, but if we wrestle
with them, they help us mature, we become better for them.
(18:08):
It's a big subject, but that's basically how it works.
The metaphor is irresistible. The planets move around and press
your buttons, you know, and kind of put planets in
your chart in the spotlight. Just take it a step further.
Transit too easy to understand where the planets actually are.
There are a couple of other methods that are more
(18:28):
like an internal biological clock in your chart. The simple
way to say it called progressions and solar arcs. But
bottom line, they also generate points that move around and
put the spotlight on certain pieces of your puzzle. When
I'm teaching my students, invariably the hardest thing for them
(18:51):
is learning transits and progressions because you have to understand
the birth chart, which is hard enough, and then what's
going on top of it. From a technical point of view,
that's the hardest kind of astrology, but as a human being,
as a consumer of the bottom line astrology, which is
just to say life. It makes it easier because your
(19:14):
birth chart is multi dimensional. There's a lot going on
in it, a lot of contracts that you've signed, you know,
in this birth, and then the universe comes along and
helps and says, you know about your venus, don't worry
about it. This year, we're going to focus on your moon,
you know. But right we're going to put this in
(19:34):
the spotlight. You can put the rest on the back burner,
and then maybe next year we're going to look at
your venus. That's a bit of an oversimplification, but it
basically makes it easier to be human. Harder to be
an astrologer, but easier to be human. To have transits and.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Progressions, absolutely, and I have found that, you know, over
the years, being able to look at the transits and progressions,
and essentially it arms me with information and knowledge and
insight to respond better. Doesn't mean that I don't react
and I don't mess up, but usually the knowledge that
(20:12):
comes through that I am able to recognize what the
opportunities for growth are or the lessons I remember when
I went through some Pluto squares, and it was three passes.
It was intense. I had a couple of sad and
traumatic incidents happen, and in that time I was very
(20:34):
engrossed in what was going on astrologically, so it wasn't
a surprise. Of course, the way things unfolded were a surprise,
but my response even though I got to grieve and
feel pain and have all of the myriad of human emotions,
I also got to see things differently. I got to grow.
(20:55):
And one of the things that happened in that timeframe
I go back to most directly is I had two Labradors,
two Labrador Retrievers, and we had a terrible accident and
my husband ran over one of our dogs in front
of the other dog and I And it was a
sheer accident, you know, I mean, it was what we
we opened the gate, we did our normal routine, and
(21:18):
it was one of the and I held her in
my arms and my other dog was what his sister,
you know, it was watching. It was one of those
moments and I remember, and I knew my Pluto's squares
were going on, and that it you know, Pluto being
about transformation, death, rebirth, and a square being a point
of tension and growth. And I remember in that moment thinking,
(21:43):
I mean, in this terrifying, tragic moment, I wasn't angry.
I mean, and that that was you know, anger like
why would you do this? Why did that happen? I
didn't feel anger. There was this element of all of
this is a divine up because it is time for
her to leave. There are things that I am needing
(22:04):
to grieve and process. There's vulnerabilities that should maybe need
to be shared. And there was this peace when she died,
and it was a peaceful death, even though it was
tragic in the accident itself. And for me, astrology spoke
to me and I again, I didn't know what was
(22:25):
going to happen, but that was one. That's one illustration
of how the transits, the progressions can equip us in
ways to look at things from a growth an evolutionary perspective.
How am I evolving? What am I needing to heal
shed transform in order to continue forward even through pain
(22:50):
or tragedy?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yes, yes, beautiful in a fierce kind of way.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That's yeah. Well, And I will tell you this. I
was born on a Libra new moon and Pluto was
conjunct my new moon. So I am very no wonder.
I said, I love the Book of Pluto because I'm
Plutonian by nature. With this, you know, librin beauty, harmony,
balanced justice thing and it's it's confusing at times and complex,
(23:20):
but that those are things that I know about myself.
And that's what I want people to hear is Astrology
is this incredible support system to better understand our developing
meaning and purpose, how we're evolving, how we get to
grow and really become the happier, highest versions of ourselves,
(23:43):
even in difficult circumstances. Doesn't mean that we bypass or
dismiss but that's the gift that it is given to me,
and so much of your work has done that. Let
me jump to another topic that fascinates me and you
can speak to much better. Better is the area of
astronomy and the sciences quantum physics, quantum entanglement and how
(24:09):
when we look up at the night sky and it's
luminous and vast and fascinating, but there's actual there are
electromagnetic frequencies that are interacting with us. And when I
talk to people, I say, well, you know, our bodies
are made up of ninety some odd percent water, and
the moon affects the tides. That's my simple go to
(24:31):
of how you know the moon affects us? We are
watery and it affects the tides. So don't you think
it impacts us? But speak to that more eloquently and
a little bit deeper in terms of how we physiologically
interact with the sky. The planets is one.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Of my favorite questions. Here's my scorpio, send it. My
area's moon might show here a little bit. Astrology often
gets attacked obviously, you know the reputation of astrologers says
ditsy and gullible. And I love this more than I should.
Where I'm at some kind of social gathering and somebody
(25:11):
thinks I'm going to be a really easy target, you know,
because I'm an astrologer.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
And will you fool them? Because you watch out, Stephen
is not an easy target.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Here's how I have them for dinner. You know, somebody
comes up and you know, well, you know, we now
know that the planets are millions and millions of miles away,
how could they possibly have any effect upon us? I said, well,
thank you, So I have I have a one two punch,
and I want to I want to show both of
these punches. First one is a dirty punch, but it's
(25:44):
sort of fun anyway goes.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
We got to be a little snarky, hey ye.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
With your mercury and scorpio and my Mars mercury conjunction.
We might have to put a trigger warning on this podcast.
But one, two punch. Here's the first bunch. The planets
are millions of miles away, how can they affect us?
And then I get this incredulous look, and I say,
you go out at night and you look at the
(26:11):
sky and that doesn't affect you. No, it's like you
poor in sense. Yes, I mean it's a dirty punch,
but it's not totally dirty. There's a poetic dimension to astrology.
The heart reacts to the sky and we have to
(26:31):
really numb something in ourselves to not feel that. Well,
that's first punch. Here's the second punch, and there's more
science side. Go outside at night and look in the
sky and there's what appears to be a bright star
Like tonight, we could go out, if it's clear, look
to the west and there's beautiful venus, you know, hanging
(26:51):
up there in the sky. Not too far from the
moon right now, and you think, what's happening. You've got energy,
and I'm talking electromagnetic energy, not hippie energy, but you
know electron yes energy.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
And hippie energy too, Steven, hippie energy and electrocog exactly,
I'm going to start out. We will go with the
hippie energy and the electromagnetic forces. We will take you
and I will take more.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Than this or us, for sure. But if I'm talking
to a skeptic, you know, I want to leave that out.
So I'll even say that lie about hippie energy because
I want to. I want to really emphasize that astrology
can make a stand for itself in the realm of
scientific assumptions. It's bigger than that, but it's not helpless there.
(27:38):
And so here's how I do it. So you take
a look. There's that bright star. It's actually Venus. You've
got energy coming from the cloud deck of Venus at
one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second, crashing
into your retina and creating measurable biochemical changes in your cerebrum,
(28:01):
which is just a fancy academic way of saying we
can see it and the idea that the planets don't
affect us is simply incorrect. You know, we can be
that dogmatic about it. If they didn't affect us, we
wouldn't know they were there. And the premise upon which
astrology rests bringing us into the wonderful world of hippie energy,
(28:25):
we interact with the solar system in more complex ways
than through our eyes. We can easily demonstrate through the eyes.
And then I usually follow it up by saying, and
any open minded person hearing that would say, show me
what you've got. You know, it's not proof, but show
(28:45):
me what you've got.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
You know, tell me more, Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Tell me more. Anybody doesn't say that they've just demonstrated
bigotry and closed mindedness. Yes.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And Carl Young, who used was so so fascinated by
and in astrology. I know with many of his patients
he used a natal chart. He wanted to look at
their natal chart before accepting them as a patient, which
I see today in more modern therapist and psychologists. And
(29:18):
I find that, of course helpful for me when I'm
seeking counsel and guidance if they can also speak in
the language of astrology or numerology, whatever tools they have
they can bring to the table. But he saw that
years ago.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I had just the incredible good fortune of being
good friends with Robert A. Johnson, who a pretty well
known Jungian writer. I happen to live in this little
desert town where I live, and we became really close
friends in the last years of his life, and Robert
studied directly with Carl Jung. He told me that doctor Young,
(29:58):
that's what he always called him. Doctor Jung had told
Robert that he never would work with a patient without
looking at their astrological chart, you know, never.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
This is so rich in terms of the history, and
of course we can go back to Galileo and I
think back to these philosophers and scientists and how they
have looked to the stars for as long as man
and woman has drawn breaths the nice sky. And intertwining
(30:32):
the science with the soul, with consciousness, with our path
of growth or evolution brings this course of study together
so poignantly but also relatably for me, because I get evidence,
and then I get to look at the evidence in
my life when I see when a big transit is
coming or there's a shift, I can make correlations, and
(30:55):
if it's a positive one and I miss the mark.
You know, if I've got a Jupiter trance, and you
know as as we all look at it and say,
you've got to you got to meet the universe a
little bit of the way. You've got to take the
leap of faith and have that faith over fear, and
then you may get the reward, the recognition whatever Jupiter
(31:16):
is expanding or touching at the time. It's just fascinating.
We can go in many directions. I want to ask
you right now today. And I know you have a
you know, a long client list. You don't see personal
clients anymore because your list is backed up so many years,
and you.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
I'm trying to catch up with the promises I've made.
I still do quite a lot of personal astrological just
not edding anybody else to.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Not adding anybody to the list, which is a great boundary,
a great boundary. And then you and fulfilling the commitments
you have and with your teaching. But what are you
working on right now that feels evolutionary to you? Where
are you put your edges? What are you curious about?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Life has dished up an opportunity for me to learn
a lot about teamwork, and that's something I've fortunately never
had to learn much about. You know. I've tended to
be my own boss, you know that, and you know,
captain of my soul. But over the last few years,
I've become involved in two projects that are too big
(32:26):
for me to do alone. One of them is my
school and the other is is actually an evolution out
of the sky within in skylog that we were talking
about earlier. It's a cell phone app called Leila. It's
currently available in a kind of early version for free.
It's on iPhones androids. We'll get to androids sooner or later.
(32:51):
Leila l I l a relate deeper and you know,
you can go right to the app and it basically,
you know, will analyze a birth yard. It'll look at
the current transits where we're adding a thing about relationships,
how to help a given relationship. It's going to it's
quite elaborate. I've been working on it for five years
(33:11):
and it's way beyond my own I'm doing the writing,
but it's the computer side of it is way beyond me.
So teamwork. And then then my school, the Forest Center
for Evolutionary Astrology, another product placement forest Astrology dot Center
not not not dot com, but dot center gets people there.
(33:32):
And we've got a couple hundred people enrolled and it's
a three or four year program, depending on how fast people
want to go all online and UH it'll take somebody
from uh from zero if that's where they are, to
uh professional ability as an astrologer.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
In three or four years, we'll train thousands of astrologers
and equipping people with the tools and the knowledge and
the insights to be able to support others in this.
And I just was curious, and I of course I'm
eager now to check out this app, but excited to
hear that you're working on it, and I again very
(34:11):
much respect that you've been working on it for years
because of these reports that you created, I have a
lot of reverence for the attention to detail and the
thoughtfulness and accuracy in which you know the standard you hold,
and so I want, I'm wanting to share all of
these resources with people so they know, at whatever level
(34:33):
they're coming in, you offer a multitude of places for
people to feel supported and to learn and expand their
enrich their curiosities as well as their theirselves with astrology
and metaphysics, and I want to talk a little bit
(34:56):
about the hippie side of things and consciousness and energy.
For me, astrology has been a massive gateway into the
development of am my intuition, my psychic abilities, trusting my voice,
my truth because when I have the knowledge about better
knowledge about who I am or why I might behave
(35:18):
the way I do, then I become clearer in my
obstacles or my brilliant abstributes, whatever that may be. Will
you talk a little bit about the development of intuition
alongside of astrology and how astrology can support those extra
(35:40):
sensory abilities that we downplay and are underdeveloped, because that
is such a critical part of evolving activating DNA dormant
brain frequencies that where to me right now. If you
were to say what is on your heart, I would
(36:00):
say this intersection between artificial intelligence and human intelligence and
how we have the information within. It's all a matter
of accessing it, and astrology has been a critical tool
for me in developing cultivating my intuition. How would you
respond to that and what are your insights?
Speaker 2 (36:20):
It's again a big subject. I want to start off
by saying this is more true some years ago than
it is today, fortunately, But when astrology was a little
more dubious in people's minds our star is rising. But
I would do a reading for somebody and they would
you could see they really wanted to own the reading.
(36:43):
You know, it was helpful to them, but they didn't
want the stigma of becoming somebody who believed in astrology.
So I put a bit of a dilemma and I
would get this. This happened many times, this kind of
conspiratorial glance from the client. It's like, you're you're pretty psychic,
aren't you, And you know, and I could see the trap,
(37:05):
you know, It's like they wanted me to say that
so they could dismiss astrology but still own the reading.
And I was going to fall for that trap. So
I said, no, you know now, and I guess you
we're all a little psychic. But I've had enough bizarrely
(37:25):
psychic experiences where I would generate a metaphor in my mind,
some just some random image to get something across, and
like the most dramatic one, that God was hitting me
over the head with this. I had had to invent
the hypothetically the last four letters of somebody's social Security
(37:45):
number and the pressing right eye and my social security
numbers in my charge. It's I'm really not trying to
toot my horror. I don't experience myself as a psychic.
I experienced myself as a good astrologer. Like most humans.
I've had some amazing, miraculous moments, but I can conjure
(38:08):
them up at will and pick the horse that's going
to win the race, or you know, that's not something
I can do. But I've come to realize that as
we study astrology, we're somehow putting our consciousness in harmony
with the basic structure of the universe. Because the basic
structure of the universe, at least as it's reflected in
(38:31):
human consciousness, is astrological. And that when we do that,
when we practice that meditation, over many years of studying
and practicing astrology, we do seem to become more psychic.
You know. It just seems to be almost like an
unintentional and onsung and glorious side effect of the practice
(38:53):
of astrology. It does hone your intuition. If you'll give
me one more minute, there's one piece that I would
like to put on the table, back to the initial imagery.
You know, Oh you're pretty psychic. Somebody's trying to dismiss. Well,
here's a response to that. And in effect, it's something
you've already brought up the sky within, you know, report writers.
(39:18):
That's purely machine driven, mechanical astrology. That's astrological theory as
it can be understood in a logical, academic way, applied
to specific situations. No room for anything psychic. It's just
a machine doing it and it works. It works like crazy.
So astrology is a science and it can stand on
(39:42):
its own two feet there. But if you practice it,
you're intuitive, and psychic functions do get involved and they're
very welcome, you know, they make it a better experience.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
That for me just encapsulates what I couldn't articulate is
the science of astrology and the practice of it is
where there is this intersection and interconnection. And it to
me sometimes when I think of that visually, I think
about the yin and the yang and that point in
which the black turns into white and the white turns
(40:16):
into black. It's that beautiful balance that we can't quite pinpoint,
and for me, that's where that intersection is. And oftentimes,
you know, like I was saying, I can be reading
something and have those transcendent aha moments that click within
my soul, and it creates this cohesion, this cohesive dialogue
(40:38):
between this vast, ever expanding universe and this universe that
is available to me within. And that's how deeply I
see it and feel about it. But also again incorporating
the science with the emotional and psychological and energetic, hippie energetic,
however you wanted to look at it, hippie energetic components.
(41:02):
And I mean, I tell you what you know, God
was laughing when he pushed you off the cosmic diving board.
As you say, you've said that, and it's one of
my favorite cheeky lines. God laughed and said, hey, go
down there and have a good time and be kind,
you know, have fun, be kind, but make a difference,
make a difference, make a splash. And it's like what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Now, there's always the fingerprint of the unresolved karma on
the present life that we will always see some connection
with it. And there be many details here. Of course,
I don't know about you, but there's one detail I
do know, where you have karma with weird unexpected that's
aquarius death. That's the athouse, your poor dog, and that
(41:50):
shocking story. That is a classic manifestation of the energetic
fingerprint of this unresolved kroma, you know, around sudden, unexpected death.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
And I lost my father at eighteen years old. He
had a cardiac event in our home. I watched him
very tragically. My mother just died about five months ago,
but I got to take care of her through the
last leg of her journey, which was beautiful and painful alike,
because it brought up old wounds, old things. So I'm
very familiar with death. I worked in my old life,
(42:28):
I worked in hospice and health care, and it's a
very familiar place to me. And getting to respond to
it with the diplomacy that you mentioned, the tact, the kindness,
rather than the angry, rebellious elements that that are in
my karma, I'm getting to do it differently, and also
(42:51):
seeing death as this extension of life and what we know,
you know, and also you know, the soul just leaves
the physical body and goes on to other things, infinite things.
I want to go back to the artificial intelligence thing
because one of the things that I am curious to
ask you about our astrology, evolutionary astrology and being better people,
(43:20):
doing things differently, making a contribution personally, interpersonally, you know,
in the in the bigger picture. So many people that
I engage with they're looking for meaning, they're looking for
a purpose, They're they're seeking and searching because there's this
lack of fulfillment. And and you wrote your your blog
(43:42):
that you did a couple a couple of months ago
or so, you know, on the entrance of Saturn into
Pisces and our opportunities and lessons and how to navigate that.
It was it was beautifully written. And I'll make sure
that I make reference to your blog when we post this,
because we're in this phase where Saturn is in Pisces
and we get to implement new spiritual tools practices, whatever
(44:05):
that may look like for you personally, whether it's like
you said, going enjoying you know, a great fishing trip
and seeing a sunrise and having the peace of the lake,
or it is a deep meditation practice astrology. Will you
talk a little bit as we wrap up about Saturn
in Pisces and why this gets to be such a
(44:28):
rich time of spiritual explanation, exploration and of course, the
north node of the Moon moving into Aries, the individual
and the I am and taking authority for the self,
but also the pitfalls, the blind spots of maybe both
the north node moving into Aries and Saturn in Pisces.
It is a to me, there is tremendous opportunity for
(44:51):
growth and tremendous opportunity for wreckage. Now with this dialogue, so.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Let's focus on the higher ground. And if we get
to the higher ground, we won't have to worry about
the wreckage, you know. Okay, So with the north Noe
moving into Aries, there's a word that's often used negatively
and we need to turn it around and see it's
got a positive side. And that word is selfishness. I
like to think of positive areas as let's say, enlightened selfishness,
(45:24):
you know, so it's not just being mean and not thinking.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Well, you do have an Aries moon, so we know
you're going to champion the hard.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
We get along pretty well.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Absolutely, But that I think of the selfishness as like
a capital S and not exclamation point ego, more like
the soul, the self, that bigger part of yourself, the
mighty I am versus the little scared ego.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
You have a right to live the life you need
to live. You know, you have a right to act
upon the dictates of your soul. And if others disapprove
of that or are sometimes inconvenienced by you being true
to your spiritual path, well that's all right. You know
you can you can eat that up and still be
true to yourself. So that's you know, in a couple
(46:09):
of lines, a healthy response over the next year and
a half or so to the areas North note, it's
true for everybody, and we're trying to get away from
Libra South note stuff, which a big subject. Reduce it
to two words, polite dishonesty, you know, just ready to
get rid of that and replace it with this enlightened selfishness.
(46:33):
Now integrating that with Saturn being in Pisces, we could
integrate it with a lot of other things, but that's
when you add so Saturn at its best likes discipline.
You know, it's like, I'm going to take this seriously,
I'm going to do this right. I'm going to do
my best. It's motivated now by Pisces, since it's in prices,
(46:57):
and so doing my best in Icey's fashion, which you
might say, is spiritual fashion. And so I could imagine
someone who's aware of awareness, you know, a person who's
on the spiritual path who feels, you know, I need,
I need six weeks alone on a mountaintop, remember my soul,
(47:21):
to meditate, to be away from the dramas of my life.
Six weeks alone on a mountaintop. And so turn to
the family. Gee, I would like to abdicate from all
my responsibilities for the next six weeks. Oh and by
the way, take a bite out of the family budget,
so aford to be on the mountaintop, see you and
the family of course, no, no, no, no no. And
(47:43):
that's where the enlightened selfishness comes in. It's like, sorry,
I'm going to do this, I need to do this,
and okay, you're called selfish. Then you get to the
mountaintop for six weeks. You get to the mountaintop for
six hours, and you're up there and you're wondering, what
am I doing here? You know this is going to
(48:04):
be boring because spiritual work is challenging. It's difficult. You know,
it's not about becoming this bliss and any you know,
with a smile on your face. For six weeks. You know,
you're confronting your own soul, and Saturn likes that hard work.
And then back to areas. It takes courage areas to
(48:26):
do that Saturn work. And so somewhere there's a person
whose life I've just described. You know that that's the situation.
Obviously that doesn't apply to everybody on the planet, but
those principles are being forceful, courageous, and assertive enough to
do what you know you need to do for the
(48:48):
care of your own soul. Everybody is ready for a
big pulse of spiritual maturation. I ses Saturn.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Spiritual spiritual maturation, and domatically it happens no will and discipline,
which says Saturn loves, is repetition, discipline, dedication, And that's
where so many folks I talk to. You know, No,
I want the pill the out. You know that, Just
(49:17):
give me a pill and make it all work. No,
You've got we We get to repeat this stuff, We
get to practice, We get to create a framework that
works for us. However poetic it is, it is just
consistently engaging in some sort of spiritually enriching, personally developmental
practice that feeds your soul and spirit is where so
(49:40):
much of the window of opportunity is in these upcoming
couple of years. And that, of course, as you and
I just said, is one one thing that's going a
couple of things that are going on in the sky today.
And so I hope that gives people a taste of
how we can look at astrology. And I'll relate it
back person in in closing up this this part of
(50:02):
the discussion is for me, I've been in recovery for years,
and of course there is a framework to recovery and
the twelve steps and and everything, and after my mom's
death and her passing, and you know, last year being
one of those years where it was like, okay, I
felt like the actor managing the play, you know, managing
(50:23):
the show, going back into not you know, having God
at the center of things, that all of that the
tools that I know, once I got a little breath
in space, I said, I got to get back down
to basics. I need to jump back into my recovery,
get back in the middle, do do the work that
I don't necessarily want to do. But when I do it,
a light turns on. It's enriching, there's clarity and prioritizing that,
(50:46):
and that's a way that all of a sudden, when
Saturn moved into Pisces, I knew it was either escapism,
I'm just gonna zone out, or I'm going to engage.
And fortunately I've been enriched in those tools and resources
a long time and am very fortunate around that. Part
of my story and the near death experiences go to
(51:09):
I shouldn't I live on borrowed time, you know, through
my own mischief and problems that are of my own making,
through alcoholism and addiction years back. I live on borrowed time,
and sometimes suit it up, showed up, made the decision
to do the work, and everything started to change. But
we go through phases or cycles, and this one with Pisces,
(51:32):
Saturn and Pisces, it was one of those times where
it said, suit up, show up, do the spiritual and
personal work, and you will see the traction, the rewards,
the growth, the piece, the happiness, all the rewards. So
I'm just encouraging anyone out there to recognize how astrology
(51:54):
evolutionary astrology, Starting to learn about this, utilizing it in
conversation and dialogue with yourself and your psychology, it keeps evolving,
it's enriching. It is a toolkit that, from my experience,
is an invaluable one and one that I feel like
(52:15):
I've had through lifetimes. We know that you have for
thousands of lifetimes. But having your voice and your wisdom
and your intelligence coming today to share all of these
deep insights and knowledge is such a gift. And I'm
not only grateful to talk to you, but I'm humbled
and then fascinated. So it's what it's wonderful. I really
(52:38):
appreciate coming on. Is there anything that you want to
close with or leave with everyone as we as we
wrap up, just.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
One, one simple thing. If I knew nothing about you
except for that aquarium self note in the ape house,
I would say you're in recovery.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
So was that because you're super psychic or just some
of my language.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
With mechanical astrology, you.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Know mechanical astrology, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
Yeah, yeah, And we need more than mechanical. But that's
the piece of it. That's a pro triumatized self note.
And you brought the brutal tool into the world to
look into it to find the librin piece that comes
as a result of the of the hard inner work
of healing.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
And you know what it took is that beautiful acronym
for God, the gift of desperation. A decade ago, when
I said I can't do this anymore, I can't do
it alone. I need help. That get that acronym for God,
the gift of desperation, and something shot through me and
my life was forever changed, you know, even with the
(53:44):
consequences of my actions and the story, but it just
became part of my essence and then also part of
my routine, my lifestyle. So and it's part of my astrology,
which I'm fulfilling. And thank goodness, I'm here to tell
the story. Still you survived, I survived. Well. Thank you
so much for being the all today. Everyone well I everyone.
(54:08):
I encourage you Stephen his books or of course they
are books that you want to buy, not just on kindle.
You want to get them, and if you're like me,
underline and highlight and take notes the reports that we referenced.
I'll be sure to put links to these things in
the podcast description so you can easily navigate. But this
(54:30):
is a wonderful place to start, or a wonderful place
to pick up, and a divine time to do it
as well, so I encourage you all, thank you for
joining us, and be well.
Speaker 2 (54:40):
Thank you,
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