Austin Coppock | Astrology, Trump, & The 2017 Assessment

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00:43 How's it going, Hireside Chatters? We know there are many tools in the magical toolbox that are carefully kept to the fringes and mocked in mainstream culture. Though there is a long history of use by powerful people and results too convincing to be ignored One of these arcane tools, of course, is astrology Anyone who has analyzed a proper birth chart knows what I'm talking about And if you haven't, you really owe it yourself Today we're going deep into this occult art again with returning guest and fellow SoCal lover Austin Kopik. He's a highly respected astrologer, author and teacher and I figured with events being so highly charged and unpredictable lately it would be great to get an astrological assessment of 2017 to give THC listeners some insight into how best to navigate the rough waters of our troubled times. Austin my man welcome back to The Higher Side! Hey Greg thanks for having me

01:34 Hell yeah, man. Psyched to have you back! Last time was a lot of fun we talked about the three hermetic arts communicating with entities how the gears of astrology work The astrological conditions of things like 9-11 It was a good time for sure and there were a couple questions left on the table though that I hoped We could kick this off with before we get into the 2017 assessment Yeah let's begin with the past Awesome yep always a strong play well Well, one of those areas is astrology and how it relates to financial cycles. Obviously there's a lot of people wishing they could crack the code in this area but financial markets like everything else do seem like they have some cycles and patterns what's the best way to think about astrology in this context as you see it?

02:21 Oh, well so that's not an area that I've specialized in. One thing about astrology is that you can bring it to bear on a wide variety of subjects but it takes a lot of study. Yeah You know we use the analogy of cracking a code...you know if you look at code breakers they have to put in a lot of mental effort and You know, even where there are secrets to be found or patterns. It's not like you just Google it and you're like okay that's it. That said yeah there have been financial astrologers for as long as there have been markets and their number of them who have excellent track records

03:02 There's a guy re married men who called the two thousand and twenty seven to two thousand nine super downturn years in advance remember reading this news like yes you wanna hold on your property until maybe mid two thousand six and then sell it cuz i think that's gonna be the height of the market just like beautiful call if I had owned property at that time. But, that said there are astrologers who focus on different levels of the market they're like that's a macro trend right? Like what is the market as a whole going to be doing over 10 years or five years but then there are also astrologers who use it for day trading which i thought was really interesting. I know a guy who

03:51 looks primarily at Daily shifts, so you know a lot of the planets are all moving But they don't change that much in a day right the only body That's you know kind of our visible system that changes really fast as the moon And so he basically watches the moon and watches it make configurations through a trading day And then sets expectations for day trading based on that and he's been very successful. He probably does some other things too, I don't want to oversimplify his method. That's Jonathan Pearl so... Right on!

04:30 Yeah, but there's you know it's there. It's there and you know what I've noticed is when i'm looking at...I don't look first money You know? I look at the trend. I look at where the planets are What the cycles are and then try to unpack the symbols from them And maybe if my primary education had been in economics I would see those implications first But that's not, you know I didn't get a degree in economics. I know some things but so that's not the first thing that comes to me but there are few things where I'm like oh I wonder if this will mean this money wise and a lot of times that is what it means

05:12 Not my area, but yeah it's there if you look for it. It's absolutely out there people have been beating the market for 30 years. What a base level let me ask are there certain planets or configurations that listeners could look for that tend to reflect well in the markets? Like what's our what's our money planet? Well, so that's gonna be different. I mean it's gonna be different for different countries and people So if you look at the the US chart The u.s Has this so there's a little bit of controversy about which chart to use for the us most folks

05:54 Use roughly five o'clock on July 4th the signing of the Declaration of Independence as you know, As far as the moment when this entity really comes into being and separates from other entities It's reasonable that charts really responsive. Anyway, the US has this Venus Jupiter conjunction in early tropical cancer And what's interesting is when those degrees get afflicted and afflicted as a technical term, basically when there are configurations that are putting nasty pressure on another area. We pretty much always have a downturn.

06:35 You know part of you know in a sense if we're looking at money were just as interested in things going down as things going on anything that takes us off the baseline right yeah and i would say that's true for divination any sort of divination or just prognostication. You know whether you're need silver or the unfortunate right what's gonna pop things up above the baseline what's going to go below and what's gonna maybe reset the base. And so what's interesting about that, or I guess what's relevant about that is that those degrees are going to be... So Venus and Jupiter are the two planets which are traditionally referred to as benefics. You know, that's bene as in beneficent, benevolent etc., and although those terms have a moral connotation, Venus and Jupiter are called that more because they tend to bring about

07:37 situations that people like. Right? And so it's this smaller definition of good, like a good day or a good year. And so the US has both of those sort of tied up together in this one area which makes them very strong right there's been a lot of abundance if we look at the history of United States but there's also it also sort of puts both of those eggs in one basket and And so when something comes along to kind of smash on that, both eggs are right there. And so we talked a little bit last time about how the decade ends not this year I guess we talked a little bit about this year but we talked about the Saturn Pluto conjunction at the end of this decade ending beginning like a 40-year power cycle and

08:28 Saturn will basically come along and start pressuring those degrees in 2018 and 19 right. And as far as you know capitalism goes we're kind of due for another obvious downturn, it's been getting to be about 10 years I dare you to find 10 years in the 20th century where there wasn't a pretty obvious correction or recession. So that'll probably arrive right on schedule, not this year but Damn. Well, I mean that's great to know! I like that kind of insight and of course people can dig deeper into those particular configurations and maybe see how they relate on their own charts but... Actually sorry i want to jump in just on one thing yeah so what's interesting about looking at an individual person's chart is that you get

09:26 One more planets maybe may end up being a money trigger for someone because of their chart that isn't usually associated with money right so venus and jupiter tend to be the again there are they good doers. And so we generally positive but, You know, you absolutely have people's lives in charts where money for them is about the sun or money is about Mars and that's the trigger for them. And one thing that's interesting about financial strategy is I was listening to an interview with Ray Merriman who had the good call about the mess at the end of last decade

10:05 And he was talking about his best calls and his best calls about, you know, situations that weren't under his control lined up really cleanly with what were his best money transits. Like the things, you know, the cycles in his chart that said okay this is going to be good for money for you, that translated into him being able to make these really accurate calls and benefit Astrology is literally wheels within wheels. We're literally looking at wheels. Right, and there's so many combinations it's definitely a deep study. Yeah you know one of the things that

10:48 I guess doesn't get discussed enough when people are talking about, you know learning astrology like there basics you can learn but it's how many in a sense how many wheels can you hold in your head at the same time and maintain coherent clear thought. Yeah And what is your capacity to filter and process all of that information? You know when I was first getting into astrology one of the things that i was excited about, what's up with this is so hard like yeah this is just gotta make me smarter you know if i consistently attempt to do this because this is engaging left brain it's engaging right brain and. You were requires a deep in complex harmonies

11:31 And so I don't know, you know there's just always the matter and this is a thing with divination. I was talking with our friend and your guest Gordon White about this couple weeks ago how sometimes the... How should we put this? The cards come up right or the indicators were there You know the planetary system but you weren't capable of seeing it at that time you know there's this necessary interface. There is always a human interface, with systems of divination. And you know, it's not a computer that just tells you exactly this that and the other. Sometimes it seems like that there are some things that are really easy to call but there is this sort of... You know, there's this human linkage between heaven and earth or between the visible and invisible.

12:23 Well said, that makes sense. And so another thing I did want to ask you about that we didn't get to last time was Ophiuchus this apparent 13th sign that NASA made some statements about from what i read it's always kind of been there and maybe this is a tactic to make astrology seem random and useless? It absolutely is! Fair enough what are your thoughts on this? You won't hear me calling disinformation on many things This is bullshit. It's not that that's not a constellation, right? Totally a constellation So let's just analyze this claim so 2,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean is where we have the first textual evidence That people are doing Astrology more or less like I do it using a lot of the same tools that people use now, right? Mm-hmm. So these are people who

13:21 With absolutely no pollution in their skies look up and study the movements of the planets, you know and the stars They don't notice an entire constellation. That's the idea right? That's the claim mm-hmm that's absurd We have star maps like Ophiuchus isn't even a modern name So the idea that this was discovered that this took like super powerful telescopes or you know science has liberated us from they You know, the swamps of ignorance so that's that's a silly claim and it goes back to

13:58 I think part of the reason that it's gotten hold at all is if people don't really know how the zodiac is constructed or what we do with that. Because it's astronomy and it's boring. So basically the zodiac that people use, the names are drawn from constellations but its actually a fixed geometrical division of the areas of the sky that doesn't process or move over time. Part of the problem is that the stars relative to us appear to move over time The sphere of the fixed stars is not entirely fixed It has this larger

14:38 Roughly like twenty five twenty six thousand year cycle rain and. Basically what that means is if you have a star calendar over a couple hundred years your star calendar stops being accurate It's ups telling you what time of year it is, right and the Egyptians are the ancient Egyptians No doubt experience this. You see that they go through periods of calendar correction because they're like Oh We've been doing 500 years. It's supposed to be you know Spring was supposed to start a week and a half ago But now it's just starting you get this, you know This slippage right? And so at some point you get this insight that you can Divide the sky in a way that doesn't change over time and that's called the tropical zodiac, right? and so we have in order to account for this when we get this Aristarchus and third century BCE is a Greek guy who we have record of it of writing about this and

15:39 People probably figure this out earlier but it's at least that old right and so most of the time we're talking about signs were talking with those divisions of the sky don't change. And because they're named for constellations, it's really confusing. Right? If you don't know about all of this now we still look at stars are still really important like so if you have Mars right next to this brilliant star let's say Antares Mars spent a lot of time next to red and parties last year That's still accounted for but the stars aren't used to define the signs because the stars from our point of view move over time and we want a fixed frame of reference. Okay, so you know part of it is this information

16:29 Then part of it is it's complicated and I dare say potentially boring to find the truth Right, oh well. I'm glad we definitely got to address that because it's come up before whenever I've brought up astrology It seems to be something people talk about yeah And it's the you get the same issue with the signs changing over time That was baked in from the beginning. That's why we're using this fixed frame of reference instead of the stars, because the stars do slide over time so when NASA says oh you know the signs have changed things have moved absolutely and that's exactly why We use the tools that we have and it's why they started using it thousands of years ago So we wouldn't have that issue but

17:14 You know, what's funny is that comes up about every two years at least out of the last 10 as if it were a totally new discovery. Yep yep I'm sure well Good summary there. And to get into the actual timeline, of course we did talk about the astrological conditions of the final few months of 2016 last time we talked I think we both kind of expected Clinton to take the election and we talked about that cycle. I did! Yeah yeah all mea culpa on that you know i didn't dig into the candidates chart super hard...I have some colleagues who

17:50 Who have great track records and have spent a lot more time in that branch than I had and everybody was just like yeah Clinton's gonna take it, and I was like okay hmm. I'm really busy. I don't want to spend 40 hours You know redoing the work you did but Not the case. Yeah, well I think it was a lot of it had to do with we talked about that cycle ending in 2020 so we thought that Hillary would be a natural choice to kind of close out that cycle this whole thing about the globalist movement you know this whole collectivists kind of thing and now we're rearing back the other way but I think that's kinda what brought us to that idea yeah well and you know what's interesting is So again I'm going to reference a conversation Gordon and I had awhile ago

18:37 So, you know the high watermark for this wave of globalization I think is obviously happened and that's receding right? You see resistance to that all over the world right now for all sorts of reasons. I think reasons great reasons and terrible reasons And what I kind of the scenario that i thought was we were going to get really sick of it under clinton and that it was going to be like death by decay but instead it got emulated.

19:12 Right, I would see the Trump victory and the way this is working as a much more rapid decomposition. Like setting the corpse on fire rather than letting it gently rot. And that's a metaphor from alchemy they call it there's the dry way and the wet way. Both of them are ways of separating the spirit or essence of matter from the body of matter Literally, it's the difference between throwing something in the oven versus letting the bugs picket clean. Letting it rot and decompose. And so instead of the wet way we're going to dry way. History coming in dry for... A way more aggressive reaction or changing up the tide?

20:01 Yeah, yeah. I mean it's the same transition right? But the route to the end of the decade is different than I thought it was going to be. Right on! So looking back at 2016 analysis are there other areas that surprised you perhaps or maybe areas where you can actually see the reflection of the roadmap in the sky being highly accurate or having a great influence? Oh yeah I'm really happy with everything i said about 2016 basically except the election. Yeah, we weren't talking at the beginning of 2016 but right away i was like okay there's this Mars Saturn thing it's giant pain in the ass lots of you know contentiousness cultural contentiousness like we haven't seen some very serious military action and the height anyone I pin that to

20:54 The mars retrograde cycle and i'm don't want to go back into all of the specifics of it but basically we had a lot of military action in the middle east that wasn't report on because everybody was interested in what donald or hillary said you know there's multi front land war happening. Yeah, kind of important. I remember they were launching this military operation to retake Fallujah at the end of spring and everybody's like but Hillary said this or but Donald said this and i'm just like that this is a fucking huge thing yeah anyway uh yeah i'm totally happy with what i said about 2016 except for the election

21:37 I really thought it was gonna go the other way. One element that uh, i did think was interesting You can definitely tell there's something in the air around the idea of fake news or not being able to really identify truth as easily. And the biggest phenomenon on 2016 that was just had nothing to do with the election or politics was Pokemon Go, so you got people looking for fake creatures out in the world and it definitely caught on more than anything and then you couple that kind of theme with the fake news narrative and you can definitely get a sense that something was going on there. Oh yeah well and I am plenty of other astrologers were talking about that in 2015 going into 2016, thats really...that was an easy call reality getting melty but it's the series of Saturn Neptune squares we expected

22:32 The definition of the real culturally to get very difficult to ascertain. It's like confusion and depression and delusion it was just that sort of anatomy of that saturn is basically the planet when we connect to that or see its influence or whatever its signifies reality like most people's dads mean when they say reality. Right? Like, you know, like get a job and this is the economic situation and you got to get up on time and go to work right it's its time in space as we experience it and can agree on right like solid knock knock Neptune is the

23:19 tripped out hippie planet and so Neptune is if you think of if you imagine the solar system for a second and You imagine all of the planets proper right? Neptune Is the furthest out in its orbit encloses the rest of the system, right? We have stuff beyond Neptune but it's different stuff Right. Yeah Pluto but Neptune is like 300 times the size of Pluto It's a different kind of body And so neptune is this like very big very fluid dreamy perspective it's really you know when people get a neptune transitive people are born with a son neptune conjunction. Never really big perspectives but i have a hard time bringing down the tune is literally

24:09 It's the edge of our system's reality, right? It gets dark and cold and weird if you go out further than that. And so when you have historically, when you have Saturn and Neptune in the configuration that they were last year which is a square, and a square means that they're exactly 90 degrees away from our point-of-view in reference to us And so squares basically give you friction between those two planets, like between what their priorities. It's one of the least harmonious relationships that those spheres can have and so when you have tripped out I'm not sure what's real planet and dad reality planet

24:56 In contention it ends up sort of messing up what people expect and what reality is going to offer answer you get challenges to know what everybody can agree on what is the news what are the facts. Is virtual reality reality right answer that's a cycle you can just follow and go back through not one with interesting And this is a little kind of jumping back to how you always have to have a human doing prognostication, whether it's tarot or statistics or whatever. Or astrology I was aware that and I think did an excellent job of articulating it repeatedly throughout the year You can listen to me on other podcasts or reading my voluminous writings That doesn't mean that I was totally immune

25:48 Right It just it doesn't mean just because you're aware of something Doesn't make you invulnerable to it, right? And that's one of the you know it You're certainly better positioned than if you didn't know about it. All right I don't know what confusions I avoided because I avoided them but at the same time, you know when you're looking in history You're still part of history, right That makes perfect sense. Well, and actually just sorry one thing I would say that we're in the hangover period from that now... That was gonna be my question is because we talked about you know the Saturn-Neptune cycle and how it affects the fake news thing And then there's also the Saturn Pluto conjunction in the thickening of borders Now as curious when those two things might be coming to an end cuz I find them both pretty annoying okay so

26:40 So our perfect configuration or the perfect version is Saturn and Neptune exactly 90 degrees away from each other. That happened three times in 2016 it will not happen again in 2017. However, there is sort of like a margin of error where it's close enough to be active right? Where the planets are let's say they're not 90 but it's like 87 degrees right and so you still get some of that action but it's not quite right and so when we're coming into a period where it's not happened yet but it's almost there we call that

27:19 Applying right that this is coming into being and then after something has happened like the Saturn Neptune Square. After it's happened and it's not gonna you know we're done with it but at the same time its only like thirty feet behind us in the rear view mirror, we say that those two are separating but it still active answer for A lot of 2017 were in the separating from that where it's the last thing that we saw so its still on our minds but it is in the rear view mirror right and so when you know after something happens you try to process it right now its what, look at the media or what people are saying online people trying to process.

28:02 These very real challenges to reality and there's this hangover from you know Oh, I believe this and it was wrong or those people believe this and it's wrong You know It's the sort of disillusionment so that's fading This year as far as the configuration is concerned. We're processing that rather than getting exactly the same trick happening again The Saturn Pluto thing I would say that we're So that conjunction and a conjunction is very easy to imagine the planets are just right next to each other in our sky. That doesn't even happen proper until the end of the decade but we're moving towards it where there was a shadow of it especially last year,

28:46 But we'll be like that, that's really waiting for us. That will be something I think will be more evident in 2018 even than now as much as I don't like that just strictly from an astrological point of view. That is going to intensify as we get towards the end of the decade rather than evaporate. Right on well so now that we do know Trump is president have you looked into his chart anymore or gotten insights from other astrologers about his character, or what kind of President he might be? Well So I mean I've looked at this chart before looking at someone's chart and being able to Say some things about their character Or their behavior is a lot easier than knowing whether they will win a contest with another person right mm-hmm

29:36 So one of the things that's nice is we've had timed birth certificate chart for Trump from the beginning. One of the issues with the election last year is that a lot of astrologers were making predictions about Trump versus Clinton when they didn't have Clinton's real data. We still don't know when she was born. Really? Yeah, there are like three different birth times floating around out there and some astrologers are like I think...I'm pretty sure it's this one because this works well enough with her history, but we still don't know and that this might be fun for you and some of your listeners. There's actually a pretty good case to be made

30:18 that she found out about astrology long time ago and actually intentionally gave wrong data Because she didn't want people, you know She because she didn't want people to be able to say this or that about her right? Yeah And that yet my friend Chris Brennan did a whole podcast about that. Oh I love that kind of stuff cuz he was just On it with the day like he tracked down every source. He called these reporters The story in like 1991, you know apparently there's another astrologer You know 20 years ago who or 25 years ago who liked talked to someone? Who knew her?

30:59 what is it, non-acupuncturist the chiropractor. And apparently the chiropractor was into astrology and was like oh hey! I looked at her chart and was like oh hey you're a Leo rising just like me! There's a rabbit hole there but that was one of the issues with i think a lot of their predictions last year is that people...a number of astrologers didn't actually have the data. You know, they knew the day but there's a big... When you're trying to figure out something in a contest right? You need time of day and it was like 8 p.m., 8 am 1 30 in the morning and all those gave very different charts right? Sorry that was uh that was a tangent but I don't know. That was cool! But yeah that was one of the problems now is looking back I should have been more critical of some of my colleagues

31:51 I mean like, so you're saying this and assuming that it's the 8 a.m or 8 p.m birth time but we don't know? Hmmmm... Right. Yeah, because astrology is hard enough when you have the data but with Trump we Will call him chart With Trump we do have a birth certificate and every astrologer I've ever seen look at it's like oh yeah Oh, yeah So here are the two things that make everybody go? Oh, yeah first he has Mars and Leo on The Ascendant So the ascendant is, you know ascending is rising right so that's your rising sign. Literally Mars had just breached the horizon in the east where everything rises most obviously the Sun and so the ascendent point in a chart is how that person projects themselves into the world

32:45 Right so if you have like jupiter there are you can expect a relatively like jolly philosophical fellow if you have saturn they're gonna be kind of. cranky and cranky in more reserve summers i think everybody has some associations with the planet mars mars is the warrior the fighter that it's a can't get there's contentiousness rate, is going getting right in your face mars rising with mars on the rising like that you absolutely expect someone who you look at a book like. Pull me from seventeen hundred years ago or eighteen hundred years ago or videos sounds and look up mars on the rising of it oh yes this person will be brash and rude in uncouth and they were at their enemies like this is not one of the subtleties of the art. And it's in the sign of leo,

33:38 So plan will always be in a sign and assign sort of put clothes on the signification of the planet right the planets are all these kinds of raw. Areas right then they have a character but they're not it's not super filled in you need to sign that the planets into can i help fill out the image And so in Mars and Leo is about representation. It's about self, it's about you know we have Mars using the image of self as a tool or a weapon And so, you know this is the guy who has his name all over everything and we can say no matter what you think about him extremely brand conscious. Right? Yeah! So it's just like oh god that that's right there and if you look at some of the physiognomic stuff for a planet on the rising like somebody who's got Mars in the rising is supposed to be red faced

34:35 It's supposed to give them a reddish coloration. They're supposed to be like, red-faced and rude and out of breath then contentious and willing to fight And you know it's just right there So everybody looks at that and they're like oh okay away up the rich heart and it's literally from my birth certificate The other thing that I think is really obvious is if you look at the position of the Sun in his chart. So he has the Sun and Gemini, right? And whenever you have... not everybody does but sometimes you'll have a planet that's right there in line with the sun You know, if you could see through the suns blinding rays, you would see the other planet behind it lined up like that or in front of it If its Venus we call out a conjunction

35:22 And so Trump has a sun-Uranus conjunction, right? And the sun has to do with identity and sort of what is a person's center. Uranus if we look at the significations for Uranus it's all about breaking patterns revolting against whatever you're supposed to do revolting into whoever you're supposed to be It's the planet of departure from the norm of pattern breaking of rebellion It's contentious like mars but it's not necessarily about i'm going to fight you it's about i'm not gonna do what you say and im gonna do things my way these are.

36:07 things that we prize in our culture, right? Individuality and all that. But departure from the norm and rebellion is neither good nor bad, right? Right. It does seem accurate though. Yeah! And so when you have somebody like it's literally it's the wild card planets, the planet of disruption One thing that's kind of fun if you look at so your nest the planet is thought to be really really strong when it's in the section of the sky that we call a query switch seven years out every eighty four and if we just look at the twentieth century he was there twice.

36:45 The last time was like i was at ninety six through two thousand three we got the internet everybody got the internet it been around for a while but everybody got it that's fine before that, what is the mid teens where we had world war one and it was the first industrial or you know machine gun was very disruptive technology as well. artillery and gas and planes, right? And you can go back. You know those are I think those are good examples of disruptions that are neither...you know I guess you can say World War One is pretty much in the negative

37:22 But you know that the consumer internet like everybody getting the internet and then ninety six to two thousand three period. You know that was a pandora's box full of gifts blessings and curses right yeah, and so it the key thing that uranus does is it changes the game You know it's not about making a smart or dumb move within the rule set its trying to change the rules that are just like you and i'm not gonna play by those rules right instead of a good or bad role monopoly is kicking over the table. Right? And so, you know with Trump having that conjunctus son and being sort of an avatar of that. That makes perfect sense You know the first couple weeks at the presidency There's a lot of like no I'm gonna try to do things even though the rules say I can't right Yeah, you know I think that was very much the nature of their primaries in the election was pure like well But you're not playing this game smartly according to the rules whereas he was playing a different game Yeah

38:25 And so, you know whatever people think about him I think that we can say that those Uranian characteristics which are suggested extremely strongly by the natal chart are very much right there. You know that's pretty inarguable and it's not like there is you know if even just a little smallest bit of astrology...I'm not stretching or torturing the symbols to get their Sun and Uranus right there boom One thing that's interesting about that is, so I talked about wheels within wheels. So one thing you can do is you can hold up the United States chart next to a leader's chart and you can look at the relationship between those two. This is basically sinistery, and so it's much more common to look at two charts in relationship with each other for romantic compatibility or friendship or relationship but you could also do this with a larger entity and person

39:25 What is worth noting is if you look at the US chart, the Mars for the U.S., right? We know what Mars means. Mars is warfare contention that kind of attitude. Mars is right on top of Trump's son Uranus conjunction so if we're looking at where does Trump naturally intersect with the American Egregor with this larger You know, the American psyche right? Yeah. He plugs right into Mars that doesn't sound good Well, I mean you know was anger an important part of getting elected for him Yeah seems like it Right that Mars is angry So yeah, you know there's that well does that signify we should expect a lot of war and his presidency? You know That's a good question

40:17 I don't necessarily, no i don't necessarily think so. I would want to look at a bunch of other stuff So there's this idea you know each chart it tends to unfold in a certain way right where there will be periods that are very contentious and periods that are very peaceful and periods of internal conflict and external conflict all this kind of stuff right? And so And sure, the person who's plugged into the big seat of that larger entity matters. But I would tend to say that the cycles of the nation itself are more dominant than the single person in charge. I actually had this discussion on Astrology Podcast with my friend Chris Brennan where he was looking at some Roman era astrological texts

41:07 they're like, oh the chart of the Emperor becomes the chart of the nation. And that makes sense if you have an emperor with unlimited power right? You'd be like okay so let's throw this chart out but regardless of how many of the rules Trump challenges and regardless whether he gets away with this or gets away with that, it's not going to become an imperial autocracy if we're not going back to Caligula. There are some frightening shadows of that like I know there are a lot people who are worried about... People use coups or takeover or Hitler's rise to power

41:49 I understand that there are some frightening parallels. It seems absurd that we would literally get to Roman emperor level, even the nastiest dictators alive right now can't really compare or have a hard time really comparing to what has happened you know what happened 2000 years ago or 1000 years ago. Fair enough. So time's definitely going by pretty quickly, let's get into that roadmap for 2017 as an overview broadly speaking what kind of year does it look like it's gonna be? What do you see as being the major themes? Okay so I guess first of all I see it is 2016 part 2

42:30 I don't know if it's the redemption, the revenge. It depends on your storyline but the two have a tremendous amount in common. So 2017 again i'm thinking of it as the sequel to 2016 and the reason why is that it has a lot in common with 2016 astrologically we have several planets, so several outer planets which are these markers like Saturn for example marks out like two to three year chapters of the world right and Saturn's gonna be in the same sign and we have some other indicators that are basically in the same place. Right? So there is a lot of character is similar it's not

43:22 Okay, let me think how to summarize this. I wrote like an 8000 word article on this a month and half ago which people should read! One of the characteristics of 2017, just looking at the astrology is that you have this super abundance of planets in fire signs. So the signs are associated with one of the four classical elements think of them as states of matter solids versus plasmas etc etc and with 2017 we have a super abundance of fire stuff and so just this elemental quality

44:01 Helps characterize some of the year right? Mm-hmm. If we're looking at water versus fire versus air versus earth And fire is the most volatile and chaotic and highest energy of the elements, right? If we're looking at them in terms of states of matter it's the high-energy state of matter. When things are on fire they're plasma or they're stars right? We can say high energy harder to predict it can be difficult you know to predict the movement of air that's like convection patterns that math is beyond me

44:39 But fire is the structure of fire is even more difficult to protect and we have a bunch of stuff. We have a bunch of configurations that highlight Uranus, which as I said before has a disruptive quality and indicates moments where the game changes. So we have a lot of things changing very rapidly it being very difficult to just sort of plan out your year and expect everything to move according to plan right if we're thinking about strategies

45:15 You know different types of strategies for dealing with a year you know some years it makes a lot of sense to bunker down, can make really structured plans and just execute those right where is that other points we have to be really adaptable because if we make a plan its going to be invalidated in a month and so. This is very much again. This is something Gordon and I were talking about and I wrote about a lot in December Is getting flexibility and adaptability? Right, because what that means is not Not making plans because things might change There's a quote that I'm gonna butcher from a book. I was reading at the time

45:57 Where the character who's this? This 90 year old secret agent is thinking back to an old sergeant She knew in Burma and that guy told her That if you expect the unexpected The expected will walk up behind you and blow your expectations out through the back of your head Expect the expected just don't forget about the rest. Mm-hmm right because being opened to the unknown shouldn't mean that you trash the known, right? Fair. You know although the sort of direction of our republic seems to be in a more uncertain place than it's been for awhile like it or not, our lives are not equally chaotic The configurations this year will definitely have some surprises and shifts for people

46:50 Big jumps but it's not the same thing right it's not complete randomness know if you and on no levels a complete randomness and just because the larger entity that your inside of. is in a particularly volatile state, it doesn't mean that your life is exactly that same state. Right? Makes sense yeah I see a lot of people conflating the sort of macro and micro or the personal and political right now And you know they both exist and they're both worth considering but though you gotta remember that they don't operate under exactly the same rules So what looking at this year led me into was a lot of thinking about flexible planning

47:31 Right, there are some military maxims and axioms where it's like you plan for everything And then once you get into the battle you toss that out the window right but you do that planning first Yeah in case things go according to plan Then you're prepared right? You just uh, you just don't freak out when the territory in the map no longer have a meaningful relationship. Mm-hmm So fire, fire, fire. And I'm going to spare you all the technical details there one of the as far as volatility we get a lot of it basically February through like let's say mid-February mid April

48:12 There's a particularly intense potentially for people like positive transformative period also appear that a lot of little freak a lot of people out. For both personal and political reasons we get a couple things on top of each other, Right, you know if you look at human beings most human beings are pretty good at dealing with one thing at a time Even if it's really hard It's when you get things coming from a couple different angles and you can't deal with this because this demands your attention But you can't totally focus on this cuz there's that other thing right? And that's you know when you look at human life through the lens of astrology and you look at

48:50 periods of time and where the planets are. Again, I have a lot of faith in people to deal with one thing at a time even if it's really difficult but when there is a bunch of stuff going on and you don't have enough bandwidth to really solve that one thing those are the periods that really tend to be more difficult to handle. So, that said... The factors that make this next especially mid-February or mid March Probably the most interesting and intense block of time because we get some eclipses, and we get a Venus retrograde. So people probably hear Mercury retrograde bandied about. Yeah. So Mercury goes retrograde three times year it's worth noting it doesn't signify the apocalypse

49:39 Venus's retrograde happens once every year and a half, about a year and a half. And those year-and-a-half increments are bundled together to make a very orderly eight-year cycle which repeats itself So this is the Venus in Aries retrograde the planet will be retrograde from our point of view, from I believe it's March 4th to April 15th. But we'll be feeling it by the end of February and so what Venus retrogrades do or what kind of experiences they correspond to... They dig up what's in people's hearts. It's basically like

50:22 It's like taking an emotional laxative. A lot of the stuff that is in people comes out and it is very important for relationships, both on a personal level as well as a collective level but you know in terms of people's personal lives the Venus retrogrades are a period of cleansing and You know shitting things out, and then saying oh I guess. I've been carrying that around I've been packed up for a year to have yeah And it's interesting in terms of like what you see in the news venus retrogrades tend to be good for sex scandals All right Yeah pizza gate

51:04 Oh God. And so one thing that's interesting is because you have this eight year cycle comprised of five Venus retrogrades, what you'll see is that people because of the structure of their charts individually tend to be sensitive to one or another of these and if you can just... If you do a little history and you can figure out which ones of these matter for you you can get really interesting and consistent precedents. And that allows you to project forward. There's a friend and colleague of mine, Patrick Watson took a look at this Venus retrograde cycle, this one in Aries which is again so this is like late winter spring 2017 late winter spring 2009 late winter spring 2001 93 etc etc Anyway we looked at this with Trump

52:01 And almost everything, almost every important event in his romantic life hooks into this cycle. Wow! Yeah people should read the article look up Patrick Watson Venus Trump Yeah, and it goes back into the early 80s. And it's like he meets his wife, he divorces his wife, he becomes a bachelor, he goes back to being married... Like it's just these big signposts. You know if you're looking at the symbolism or meaning of a planet from our perspective reversing its course, lot of times you have reversals right? Where it's like changing directions

52:41 And so you'll see that and a lot of people will feel that emotionally. They'll feel like changing directions or like maybe I don't want to do this, and then they'll come back to maybe I do want to do this but not this way. Or maybe I do love this person. There's a lot of literally what's funny is what you see, what people experience is back-and-forth about something, and that's what the planet is visibly doing if you watched it over time. It's back-and-forth over the same patch of sky Right on all right, so we have that and so that like volatilizes the passions right and so we have that brewing while We have two eclipses And that's not necessarily a crazy thing there are four eclipses every year with very few exceptions They're not all equally

53:31 intense, but you almost always get four every year. You get a two-pack at the time you get one solar and one lunar and then about six months later you get one solar in one lunar right? So this year we have a penumbral eclipse in Leo on February 10th and then we have an annular eclipse in a solar eclipse in Pisces on the 26 of the month And an annular eclipse is one of those ring-of-fire ones. They're really cool looking It's not just like some kind of barely visible sort of bullshit shadow Yeah, because sometimes you know You hear there's gonna be an eclipse and you go to see it and you're like well that really wasn't that cool That was it? yeah I thought that you know I thought it was going to be darkness in the day and the birds would come out and start singing hymns To the old ones and you know

54:29 But eclipses do a lot of things. There's a lot of eclipse lore people have been telling stories about Clips as long as there've been people it's one of the when you know when you get a real one It's one of the most dramatic Celestial events, you can see right on what I will say is that what eclipses to do consistently is they get things moving that which is latent in a person's life and Often rises to the surface and then makes a change it's almost like eclipse is sort of if we have like that, sort of visible invisible or the apparent in the latent those two are usually kind of.

55:10 Off center there kind of they're not quite connecting right so it's some stuff stays over here and hidden in some stuff stays over here and seen invisible. Eclipse is tend to bring those two layers into alignment and so we get a staff comes out of nowhere and also stuff goes back to nowhere It's almost like the mythological angle on it would be like the gateway between the world of living in the dead is open for business and stuff can jump out there and stuff can fall into their. What that means in practice this stuff moves a lot quicker during that lunar cycle and so,

55:52 We have a pair of those. The one on February 10th is, you can kind of feel it but it's not super dramatic. The one on the 26th, February 26th is pretty intense and its right around the Venus retrograde station there some pretty intense Mars stuff happening end of February should be pretty interesting And by interesting, I mean semi-terrifying if you watch the news. And so there's that and then we'll work through that and go back to sort of the normal volatility for this year because this year as a whole is more volatile than most years right? Just if we looked at like a 40-year average right? A lot of questions

56:35 There are a lot of questions throughout the year. When I wrote my piece attempting to summarize 2017 back in December, I decided to go with the casino metaphor because it's like you gotta wait for those cards to get turned over before you know how strong your hand is and one thing that's fun about poker as a metaphor is it's a game of both skill and chance It's not like everything is random, you might get fucked. That's not the message. There are a lot of... Or you think about the lotteries where they have all those little balls bouncing around right? No matter what industry your in right now there is a good chance that everybody watching those balls and it's going to be plan A B or C depending on which ones come up Right

57:30 I love the analogy because it's like you were talking earlier about the flexibility required. And I play a lot of Texas Hold'em, you know, you get your two cards and then you see the flop and that could drastically change your situation. And then when you get to the river, I mean everybody knows the river can turn the whole game upside down. So yeah, you can plan but then you also have to be ready for sudden changes. Right? Right. And so that's part of the territory of this year And to a certain degree that's interesting for me as an astrologer, because the symbols are literally giving or providing this image or this impression. Saying like okay wait and see and then move it doesn't mean don't come up with any ideas about what you might do if this eventuality came up but you know the strategy is not

58:24 You know fixed start to finish it the strategy of working with a volatile situation which is interesting because that's in contradiction to a certain degree with the idea of what i'm gonna predict the future. Yeah you can see that there's a period where making hard predictions expecting things to go exactly that way, he's not a good strategy Right, right which is ironic because that in of itself is hopefully an accurate prediction. Right? Yeah But again there's that meta level where you're not immune to the times that you're getting The data on you can say this is a period of history That looks like this and if you live through that You don't get a free pass you get it, you know, you get maybe a better map but you know The map does not make you invulnerable in the territory It's not God mode

59:16 Right. Well said! So one thing I want to get to that's really interesting, probably the most interesting single thing in the astrology of 2017 is something that's already being called The Great American Eclipse Yeah August right? I love that title. I love like evocative poetic titles Oh yeah You know, the media very rarely gives me those. Usually I have to make them up myself. Yeah so that The Great American Eclipse is a total solar eclipse in August and let me get you the actual date it's um

59:57 It's August 21st, I think. I wrote it on the calendar. Yeah, I just got done writing about February exhaustively and so all of my data slots are temporarily occupied. Oh there it is beautiful yeah so it's uh yeah it's august 21st and so that is a total solar eclipse in Leo now The reason that it's being called the Great American Eclipse is that it will be visible through almost the entire country. It'll start, if you track the path of it across the country basically starts being visible in the northwestern United States and then it sort of exits down there around those sort of south central east coast

1:00:49 And so we haven't had a total solar eclipse that was visible across pretty much the entire continental US since, oh who's it? 1918. 1918 right so this doesn't happen very often And what's even more interesting about that is, so this eclipse takes place at the very end of the sign of Leo. It takes place at 28 degrees out of 30 of Leo and Back to trump trump has that mars the we're talking about and that ascendant. In the last degrees of leo so this is right on his mars and it's great on his ascended and so,

1:01:36 You know if if a client came to me and we were sitting down We're like, oh let's talk about this year. And I saw that you know my eyebrows would would would shoot through my hairline Hmm, that's a that's a big in astrology goes You know a clip says it's interesting if it can be difficult to know exactly what eclipse is due but they do stuff that's highly charged moment, yeah you underline and couple times and you get out your highlighter right. And that ascendant, we're talking about the ascending degree of a chart. That's considered to be an extremely sensitive point in a person's natal chart. We could say that that's analogous to your doorstop right? Like that's your front...that's the front door of your chart right and so when you get a significant configuration that comes to your doorstep like that it's gonna mean stuff

1:02:33 And so that's really interesting. And you know, it's so funny that it's literally on the rising of the president United States and just happens to be visible across all of the United States man right? So, you know that says something about this country. It's my country can you say if it's more positive or negative? So what I will say is because it's in Leo and it's on the dragon's head or North node of the moon In general, this eclipse cycle because this one is in Leo but we're gonna have them in Leo and Aquarius until early 2018. Eclipses move in cycles where you get... You'll get them in this pair of signs and then this pair of signs than the next pair of signs it's roughly 18 months per cycle

1:03:27 Doesn't always work out to exactly that this one's gonna be more like 23 But so this one has the North node or the dragon's head, which is the eclipse indicator in Leo So half of them are going to be in Leo generally if I were interpreting that it would mean that it would speak to a rise in identification with How should we say, a rise in nationalism? A rise in waving a banner and identifying with the banner. It's very like team sports. Damn! On a positive level on an individual level I think this cycle will give a lot of people the courage to stand up and say this is who I am and this is what I believe it's basically a push to get out there and represent whatever

1:04:19 That and it's very linked to the identification mechanism, which obviously works on a nationalist level and works on a local level an individual level. We can think of a lot of nationalism has led to terrible things but that process of identification with something is not inherently pathological unless you're A really serious buddhist right like being willing to step into you know what this is who i am and this is what I believe. And i'm willing to be seen doing that right now seems to be happening a lot even with the women's march in the react the negative reaction to trump i mean that's in there wow man love it so

1:05:03 That does just about covered I think and just like last time. I leave this conversation really fired up about astrology And I've definitely got a few key areas marked on my calendar that eclipse for sure, and we'll see what happens And if people do want more Austin Coppock remind them how to do that you have some intensive classes You have a yearly almanac What else should people know so you can find pretty much everything? I'm doing at Austin coppock calm I write Almost right every week i read weekly is it right to write about months i wrote about this year been doing a lot of writing trying to put it down.

1:05:43 I'm teaching a series of classes on the fundamentals of astrology. The first one actually starts tomorrow, on the 4th February so that people probably won't get this in time to sign up for that but that's part of an eight-month modular series where you can jump in at any point and you can also get recordings if you want to catch up but yeah I'm teaching classes sort of beginner intermediate advanced topics all year and I try to you know get that out through newsletters and announcements and whatnot. Oh, I do readings usually...I'm booked out till June right now. Damn! Congrats Thank You Yeah it's a great problem to have. I feel really bad telling somebody they have to wait four months but it's just..I just can't

1:06:38 It's not something I like, it's not a conveyor belt where I'm just like let's do everyone as quickly and efficiently as possible. Let's get this assembly line style divination going but if people want to make an appointment with me for the summer because that four or five months booked out just keeps pushing further and further So, you know if you if you want to schedule a talk like it's way smarter to just get it ironed out now so You know that in September we're gonna have a chat or July Yeah sweet. That makes sense. Well very cool Austin. You are the goddamn man Thanks again take care of yourself out there. Well thanks for having me on It's always great to talk to you and boom goes the dynamite people The triumphant return of Austin Coppock gotta love it

1:07:31 I'm becoming more and more of a fan of astrology. I just enjoy looking at the world from that perspective once in awhile, I think the way you explain the period we're in as it relates to the zodiac wheel It's always so fascinating to me. And this show is a rare case where the main thing I wanted to explore and talk about didn't come up until The Plus Show, but that is the Great American Eclipse! It's coming in August and every astrologer is apparently drawing a huge circle around it as THE event this year. Astrologically, it's the most interesting and has some curious tie-ins to Trump's chart

1:08:09 But again, that is mainly in the second hour. So sign up for PLUS if you're interested or just keep an eye on August 21st onward. A big part of why I like astrology is that to some degree it's testable Of course it's not always black and white, but it's an art form really that goes back so long. It should be respected if you think the ancients were insightful or that secret societies only study and maintain things that they think have merit And with this eclipse we don't know exactly what's going to happen of course as Austin said But we can highlight it and underline it and expect it to be meaningful in some way

1:08:50 we'll just have to see. But if you liked Austin's first appearance, I think this is a pretty good complement to it—a pretty good continuation It's also funny because I just mentioned last week how we got this fresh new forum thing going on and someone actually posted about the Eclipse before the show came out, and them being in Wyoming. And that the whole town is getting booked up by tourists who want to get out there and see the Eclipse from that vantage point even this far in advance several months! I find that interesting It's actually kind of cool that in the modern world people would put that much foresight into getting a good look at an astrological event, planning their short rare vacations around it. I like it regardless of the reasoning! I just like that the moon would have such an influence over the movement of people makes you wonder who's really in charge huh?

1:09:46 So I thought the first hour of this show was pretty awesome. Of course, I think the Eclipse talk in the second is the highlight but you know to sign up! You've probably been listening long enough but some other things we get into are aspects of my natal chart and how 2017 looks for me who cares right? But Austin also dropped knowledge about the Chinese Zodiac and what it means for 2017 to be the year of the fire cock. And really, is there any better president to get sworn in in the first month of the year than Donald Trump? I mean, I think people who love him and those who hate him could probably come together and agree that he sort-of embodies that perfectly The apex of aggressive male energy Capitalism personified

1:10:32 I think it applies. But we also talked about the importance of 2018 as a game changer year, as opposed to 2017 just being 16 part 2. Talked about the closing of both the 20 and 200-year cycle and the implications it may have on The Elite in various power structures throughout the planet A continuation of something that we did touch on in that last talk And we also got into the fact that we'll be transitioning from Earth dominant era to an heir-dominant era and what that might mean. To me it seemed to have characteristics that would be appropriate for a rebuilding period regardless of if we go through one or not they just seemed like helpful attributes for a time period like that so good time all around

1:11:21 Interesting stuff. Austin is the man I took a little long to get this show out, so the next one should be right around the corner Gotta stay timely gotta try and be professional And this next show is another return guest that I think a lot of people liked last time We're gonna leave it a mystery because why not? And with that, I guess i'm out of here. I've done my part Your move natal chart navigators and the mysterious forces of the zodiac wheel you're fucking... Because You're My Son Watch Out I Can't Stay Running Around Can't Stay Alone Cause You're Mine

1:13:37 I'm sorry, Sparrow. I'm afraid to do the time. I ain't gonna take none of your proven wrongs and I can't stand no putting me down. Yeah! Sparrow, you're wasting my

1:14:41 The high sides, they're on you. You're not afraid to do the time. Yeah! Yeah! Oh yeah!