The Aspects II - Astrology 101

Kyle Pierce 0:05

Hello, and welcome to astrology hotline, the podcast where we answer all your burning birthchart and astrology questions. We're joined once again today by Ada Pembroke. And we're going to be continuing our discussion on the aspects. The absolute pleasure. I wonder how much time we actually spent chatting before recording the show, compared to like how long we're actually going to record today.

Ada Pembroke 0:28

So far, I think it's been about an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah,

Kyle Pierce 0:31

so yeah, okay. It's about her her session for today. All right. thing we're, we're, we're flexible people. But how are you guys enjoying the mercury retrograde? Read

Tristan Paylor 0:49

how to say it like you're from Minnesota. Yeah.

Kyle Pierce 0:53

That would be a good Mercury Retrograde signification is just suddenly starting to talk in accents.

Tristan Paylor 1:02

There are cases of people who've had some sort of a traumatic brain injury and wake up speaking in a different accent and there was no childhood connection. They did grow up around anyone who spoke using that accent or in any region where the accent was spoken. Just suddenly, you wake up from a head injury and you speak in a southern drawl. For the rest of your life. It's very mysterious.

Kyle Pierce 1:26

I had a teacher that had that actually. She taught is a massage therapy teacher. And she Spoken like a kind of a German accent. And every I remember being told before the class like just don't don't say anything about it like, because it was overall a decent German accent. But like you could tell that it wasn't quite a German accent, but, but it's the thing. I watched the thing on it recently. And I immediately thought that I want to see these people's charts. I want to see how that that is described. And a birth chart.

Ada Pembroke 1:59

Maybe it's progressed Mercury stationing retrograde or something like that would be really fascinating to look at.

Kyle Pierce 2:05

Yeah, I know my progress. Mercury's retrograde, but it's gonna happen everybody.

Ada Pembroke 2:12

Eventually.

Kyle Pierce 2:13

Yeah, if you live long enough. I don't know. But speaking of accents, it's funny that that came up because I have been playing this game hold fast. And I've been talking about it. I feel like because it's so much fun. But basically an online game where you know, you have muskets, and you actually have to wait and reload and stuff, but has this really active online community and you have to get organized to win. But it's like Napoleonic era. So you know, you're trying to organize people trying to get them to follow you so that you can get them into lines and you know, organize your your fire and fire volleys and stuff. And if you can do a good accent, people will follow you more. And it keeps the game fun. So I've been doing a lot of accents lately playing this game. And I don't know it could be something to do with Mercury in Gemini Mercury in Gemini retrograde seems like they would be into two different accents.

Ada Pembroke 3:09

That's fascinating. I

Kyle Pierce 3:10

really wanted to follow this stream of add thought, you know, I would go look for a chart. A birth chart with Mercury in Gemini retrograde but we're not going to do that. Tell me we're not unfortunately.

Tristan Paylor 3:25

Now, I feel like we should do an episode where we just let Kyle loose. This episode has no topic. We're just gonna let Kyle talk about astrology for an hour. And we're just gonna see Yeah, what where do we go? Which charts do we look at? No one knows.

Kyle Pierce 3:42

already kind of happens, I think was Ted Kaczynski. What might have been a Mercury Retrograde in Gemini. So you had Mercury in Gemini?

Ada Pembroke 3:50

Oh, good. Back to Ted Kaczynski.

Kyle Pierce 3:52

Yeah, I thought we were done with that.

Ada Pembroke 3:56

First time someone has ever said that might be just now. Guys remember Ted Kaczynski.

Tristan Paylor 4:02

For those who haven't listened to part one of this series yet. We use Ted Kaczynski his chart as an example of the sextile aspect. And the rest of his chart was so interesting that we just talked about his chart for a good 10 or 15 minutes.

Ada Pembroke 4:18

Yeah, I don't actually stand serial killers. Like I feel like that should be absolutely clear right from the beginning.

Kyle Pierce 4:25

Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not not pro serial killer by any stretch. Granted, I have another podcast where I talk about them in the birth charts a lot. But, you know, I don't endorse these things, obviously. But, you know, it's hard not to be interested in the extremes of the human experience, for sure. And

Tristan Paylor 4:45

I think if you're interested in studying people, in any sort of field, you're going to be interested in the extreme ends of the spectrum. You know, what is it that makes people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu or Have the Dalai Lama so compassionate and empathetic and what makes people like Ted Kaczynski do things that are so totally the opposite of that?

Ada Pembroke 5:09

Or the situation where you get like, you know, Charlie Chaplin's chart is actually really similar to Adolf Hitler's. Oh, yeah, I love that one.

Kyle Pierce 5:16

They're born in the same day, their time twins are Nick Dagen Best did a talk, basically comparing both of the charts. It's really interesting. Actually, if you join the association for young astrologers, his talk on time twins is free. You pay like I think 20 bucks a year to be a member. But But yeah. Sometimes looking at somebody's chart does facilitate empathy. Even if it's, you know, a serial killers chart. It's like, oh, wow, I've seen a lot of serial killer charts. And they don't always, obviously, screen of serial killing. But you can usually find the symbolism there. But you can also look at it and be like, this could have been a lot of different things didn't have to be this. But sometimes it's really, really like, ouch. Yeah, it's

Tristan Paylor 6:05

like the most awful extreme potential, or a placement like 99.9% of the time, it's going to manifest as anything but this but yeah, at its most horrible extreme. This is what that symbolism looks like when it plays out.

Kyle Pierce 6:19

Yeah. But it can facilitate empathy. Sometimes, you know, not that Empathy means you can don't something but know your enemy. Right.

Ada Pembroke 6:29

And like trickster stories, yeah, it seems like humans need people to tell them what not to do by doing it. Yeah,

Kyle Pierce 6:35

absolutely. I have you guys ever read the books? Ender's Game?

Unknown Speaker 6:41

Yes. Love those books.

Kyle Pierce 6:44

That was one of the things you talked about why Ender was able to defeat the enemy aliens because he loved the aliens, you know, because he was able to, like get inside their their minds and empathize with them. And that made him know, the aliens really well. How he's able to beat them. Spoiler alert. But anyway,

Tristan Paylor 7:03

you're gonna have to get I have to put a spoiler alert on the show notes.

Ada Pembroke 7:07

Yeah. Sorry, guy. And then everybody's gonna be like, Why is he spoiling Ender's Game? I have to watch the

Tristan Paylor 7:13

show. That's true. I mean, it's gonna generate interest this way.

Kyle Pierce 7:18

It's been a job a long time. So. And there's a whole series that goes beyond the first book and the thing that I spoiled. So

Ada Pembroke 7:26

I only wrote the first one because I got to the end of it. And I fortunately had not had it spoiled. And I was like, what? took me so long to get over it. I moved on.

Kyle Pierce 7:37

Oh, yeah. What's great though, is that there's another set of books within the series about another character and it's like the whole story, but from the perspective of another character from being who was actually I liked a lot more than than Ender. Ender is cool. But being where it's at.

Ada Pembroke 7:56

I wish I had the patience as a writer to tell the same story twice.

Kyle Pierce 8:00

I, it was a rather brilliantly done, I think I learned some things about Orson Scott Card that made me less fond of him overall, as a human but great writer. Yeah. But um, yeah, speaking of the extremes of human experience, and birth charts, I think we're going to be focusing a bit on the Trine here does it start us off, and I have just a real gem of a Trine that I can't wait to share. I'm so excited about it. I know that I'm not going to do this chart justice, my standards, because I've been obsessed with this figure in history for so long. And I'm gonna have to limit how much I talk about him because he's worthy of his own podcast. In fact, I've had planned on doing a podcast about this person, before even getting into astrology. So Who's he talking about? Let's

Ada Pembroke 8:54

build the suspense. Who is this individuals birth data?

Tristan Paylor 8:57

Yeah. Do you want to input that for us? And I think before we start getting into examples, we should probably talk a little bit about what we think the trend means in general. Yeah, and then jump into specific examples. Hopefully, if you're listening to this episode, you listened to part one, where we went over aspects in general and we talked about the sextile. And our original plan was to talk about the sextile and the Trine together on the last episode, but we had so much to say about the sextile. And we had so much fun with our example charts, that we ended up talking about sextiles for an hour. So I think we're just going to carry on with that format. We're going to probably talk about the Trine and share some examples of trends in different birth charts for the remainder of this podcast, and then you can tune in for future episodes to hear the rest of the aspects. Yeah. So the Trine is the aspect of Jupiter and that is One helpful interpretive principle that you can use when you're looking at trends and also trying to distinguish them from sextiles. I know we've talked a lot about what makes trines and sextiles different on the last episode, and we actually have an entire episode just on that subject. So if you are interested in knowing more about how to distinguish between trines and sextiles, definitely listened to that episode as well. But we talked quite a bit about the sextile being, you know a lot about collaboration and creativity and sort of bringing people or situations or topics together, that have enough in common to see eye to eye but in other ways are very different. And in the case of the trine, we have events or situations or people coming together because they are very similar because they have a lot in common. And this is that person that you don't even really have to speak to, you can just kind of read each other's minds, because you're so connected to each other. That's how planets in trine to feel about each other planets in Trine are in signs that share the same element. So they're gonna share the same polarity. And the same element, they have a ton in common, the only thing they don't have in common is mode. So they just kind of get each other without having to say anything. And that makes it really easy to get on the same wavelength and offer each other support and also offer each other affirmation. If you share the same values, and the same kind of temperament and the same interests as somebody else, it comes naturally to want to support that person. You know, you're your own sort of personal cheerleading squad and your life, the people that you really feel I've got your back, those are probably people who really share your values and interests. So that's the sort of dynamic that's going on with planets in a Trine in a birth chart as well. Yeah,

Kyle Pierce 11:51

absolutely. It's stabilizing and affirming really is the nature of Jupiter and also the nature of the Trine. And one of the sort of analogies we ended up using, I think, for the episode we did the difference between trines and sextiles was that the Trine is kind of like, sort of like social benefits a little bit, there's a lot of ways that trines will show up beyond that, but there's that sort of energy of like, just sort of by nature of who you are, and who you were born as the you just end up fitting in to the group or sort of like inherent benefits, you're, you're privileged, really in a sense, like, if you were, you know, born a, a middle class, white person in North America, you know, you're just going to have access to stuff that inherently that other people may not be sort of like invited to the club a little bit more easily.

Tristan Paylor 12:51

Yeah, if you think about there being save, you've got a chart, and there are two planets and water signs and another planet enters a water sign that planet is now part of the water sign club. You know, they're on the inside there, they're a member because they also belong to a water sign. So there's that sense of, of being a part of something being included in something, and having that the support of a group. But also, the sort of potential difficulty, I think with trines is that that mutual agreement and the sort of stabilization that comes from being part of a relationship or a group where you tend to agree on things is the sort of echo chamber effect where you know, if you are in a little bubble with only people who affirm your point of view and support your objectives and interests, you don't experience any sort of external questioning or criticism of your ideas. And that can obviously cause problems and cause narrow mindedness. So although trines are generally thought of as pleasant aspects, I do think nothing is black and white, and planets and trine with each other can potentially form a little bit of an echo chamber with each other. I know Ada, you mentioned before we started recording that you have some controversial takes on trines that I am just my favorite. I was so excited to hear what they are. So please, if you feel like sharing your your your take,

Ada Pembroke 14:34

I don't know if there's so much controversial takes or if they're more just bitter feelings.

Kyle Pierce 14:40

Throw trains under the bus.

Ada Pembroke 14:42

I, I really don't like try and it's like, you know, it's about the aspect. I love people who have trines they're really interesting to talk to you and you know, that's the most important thing to me with mercury in the midheaven but I just I I find you know as a consulting astrologer when somebody comes to talk to me it is never about a Trine absolutely never about a Trine 90% of the time they want to talk about a transit involving a conjunction, like 8% of the time they want to talk about opposition's or squares and the other 2% of the time is, you know, I literally have never had a client come in to talk about a trend like that when they're happening by transit, most of the time, they're invisible. And then when you have a trend in your natal chart, I have a couple of trends. And they I have two main trines. And I have like five squares. And I have more trouble with the trines than I do with all of the rest of the squares combined. Because when the squares are causing trouble, they're really loud about it, you know exactly what's going on. But this the trines they're sneaky. They're so sneaky. Like, they will be conspiring with each other behind your back. And like I've got, I've got the Moon and Mars like happening behind me. And I'm like, I'm not angry, you're angry, and everybody else around me is like, oh, no, here we go. Again. The passive aggressive anger and, and they're just, they're so hard to work with consciously, because when they're activated by transit, they don't do anything. And, and when they're expressing themselves as like a natal thing in your life. Like, it is just impossible to bring consciousness to this aspect, because it's just so strong, and yet so loving, it's like a river that takes you downstream.

Kyle Pierce 16:44

It's it's lubricated, you know, it flows almost so easily. It they tend to feel good. Because they flow. So naturally, they don't always feel good. But like they. Because the things that they indicate are so natural, so easy to fall into. Yeah, you don't tend to want to talk to about him, because it's almost like hard to imagine doing something different, like this is so natural and easy for me, why would I want to change it, it's almost harder to find a better way of managing something that feels very natural and easy than it is to identify something that's really difficult, and needs to be reworked. It's already difficult, you're more open to to reworking it, you know, or you actually actively have to, because it's a source of challenge. So you will ultimately spend a lot more time maybe working with your your squares. And, you know, they may end up indicating longer term more productive, or more well rounded areas of your life, because you have to put a lot of conscious effort and energy into to working with them.

Tristan Paylor 17:58

And the trends can be things that you just sort of take for granted, you know, and I think it's it's something that you and I were talking about before recorded data, that it's harder for people to identify with trends. And when people are doing divination of any kind, they're generally not looking for answers about why everything is going so well for them. When I mean, even if you're not dealing with a really serious or really life changing problem, if you sit down to do a Tarot reading, you're generally asking like, there's, there's some sort of tension that needs to be resolved. It's, it's like when you're writing a song, there needs to be tension in the music in order for the music to be interesting and good. If you're writing a story, there needs to be tension or conflict in the story. Otherwise, it's not a story. And it's boring as hell. And I think, you know, when we do divination narrative, is a big part of it. And we're trying to figure things out about ourselves and about our world. And we're generally trying to figure out things that cause some kind of tension. Even if it's positive tension, even if it's not like a huge problem, or conflict, tension is still at the base of it, and there's no tension in a tribe. So they're harder to notice. And people are less likely to go to an astrologer because they're like, Wow, I have absolutely no tension in this area of my life. Can you tell me about that? I really need to figure this out. Because you don't, you don't need to figure it out. It's just going smoothly. Whereas the things that are not going smoothly, those are the things you want to figure out. And those are the things you're going to consult the cards or the stars or whatever else you might be consulting for answers about.

Kyle Pierce 19:38

Yeah, absolutely. I love the analogy with music and for something to be compelling. Like there has to be a little bit of tension in there. And just thinking about, you know, the nature of a triumph in the nature of Jupiter, Jupiter stabilizes and affirms right, and not that we're on to the squares yet, but I think we already mentioned that squares are the nature of Mars and what does Mars do? It destabilizes things to prompt action. You know, it, it sort of tips things over and says, What are you going to do about this like, like, wants to create movement. And that's the maybe the dark side of trends is that you can become complacent with them, you know, they don't necessarily always prompt the same kind of action that a software can, depending, you know, on the planets involved, obviously,

Tristan Paylor 20:30

think that's a really good description of Mars destabilizing in order to create action. That's the perfect. So the best description I think I've heard from our site really distills it.

Ada Pembroke 20:40

I agree. Good job.

Tristan Paylor 20:44

So that's why we keep Kyle around.

Kyle Pierce 20:49

I think the thing though, too, we don't want to talk too much about trends, because they no, no, no, kind of like, like Jupiter is the tend to help facilitate successful endeavors. Things that maybe just tend to work well, the first time around. And as we get into examples, it's we'll you know, kind of see how the triune does promote things just sort of working favorably, depending on the planets, of course, but sometimes they can work so well, that they, the direction that they steer you in, isn't always positive.

Tristan Paylor 21:22

Yeah, I don't think it's black and white, trines and sextiles are positive squares and opposition's or negative situation, I think it's really, the context is everything. You know, if you have circumstances that are easy and flowing, well, what are you doing with them? Like we were talking about with the second, you know, during the sextile episode, are you building a bond with your sextiles? Or are you doing something constructive, and life affirming with your sextiles? So, yeah,

Ada Pembroke 21:55

same thing with trines, you'll be the person who has you know, is using that use to create things or you can be the person who is blindly running through life thinking that life is wonderful, while there are bombs going off behind you, and no idea that you're creating chaos and you're weak.

Tristan Paylor 22:16

You can be Yeah, and I think that's something you can have too much peace. Like, there are two, two ways of looking at peace, there's peace, which is, you know, a genuine absence of conflict. And then there's peace, which is just sort of refusing to engage with conflict, even though there's definitely conflict happening. So when you're looking at something like a try, and that's another good question to ask yourself, is, does this mean that I am genuinely at peace with these things? Or am I just sort of ignoring them? Because it's more comfortable for me to ignore them? And that feels like peace, but if I get to the root of it, it's not genuine peace?

Kyle Pierce 23:00

Yeah. But just because it's, you know, you don't have to deal with the issues around that topic. Doesn't make that not an issue in the world. You know, you can kind of get some entitlement maybe or just some privilege with a trend, where, you know, you might be benefiting but sometimes at the big expense of other people.

Ada Pembroke 23:20

It's like the difference between the saying, you know, I'm sorry to hear that and saying, No, really, I didn't want to hear that. Yeah,

Kyle Pierce 23:28

yeah. Are you talking about these problems? This is not my problem. Sounds like your problem.

Ada Pembroke 23:35

My day was going fine.

Kyle Pierce 23:38

You only have like one train. Well, I guess when you include points in the chart between planets on the train.

Tristan Paylor 23:50

I have Jupiter trying or sorry. No, it's not. I have Jupiter sextile my ascendant. I feel like

Kyle Pierce 23:57

Trine Jupiter though, and I guess I've assigned based trine with Saturn and Jupiter, and Neptune. I forget to acknowledge

Tristan Paylor 24:07

I have Jupiter pretty closely sextile my ascendant and I can definitely see that in that I am generally pleasant and easy to be around and you know, polite and try to be considerate of other people and people tend to feel calm around me when I was working in the service industry. And I had seniority and new staff were brought on and I was responsible for training them or kind of showing them around there I was like, later on they were like I'm so glad it was you because you were so easy to get along with and made me feel so at ease which is really nice. I feel like that's a good quality I have but the dark side of that quality is I don't tend to take a stand when something shitty is happening either because I really want to keep the peace. So that can be kind of a dark side of Jupiter right is that I just want everyone to feel comfortable and I want everyone to get along and I don't want to rock the boat, I want everything to be stable and cozy and easy and so when there is actually conflict going on, I'm not going to be the first person to sort of jump in the fray and be Mars about and that's when you need that. You need that like square kind of energy to jump in there and and actually be willing to face a conflict head on and do something about it to get it resolved. You can't just resolve it by being nice all the time.

Ada Pembroke 25:27

Meanwhile, I have Mars sextile the ascendant so I definitely don't have that problem.

Tristan Paylor 25:34

Yeah, Aida and I would be perfectly balanced as a duo. We can do the good cop bad cop really well.

Ada Pembroke 25:39

Oh, yeah. Always the bad cop, whether it wants to be or not.

Tristan Paylor 25:44

It's a tough job. It's an important job. But it's a really tough job because people you have to be willing to not be liked. And I think that's something I really struggle with. I always want to be liked, I need to validate it. And it's like, there are times when being like does not the most important thing when you have to be willing to be a little unlikable in order to do the right thing.

Ada Pembroke 26:03

Oh, yeah. I have a Leo Ascendant, I practically have to get that tattooed on my arm.

Kyle Pierce 26:11

Yeah, that actually brings up a good point maybe about aspects to the ascendant, which I don't know how you guys tend to interpret them. And I increasingly do this with aspects between planets as well. But it just sort of start with the planet having that relationship with the ascendant. Just a relationship. It comes through strongly and easily. And then maybe secondarily, it being a Trine, or sextile, or square, particularly with the ascendant. I'm kind of like, I don't know, like, if it's, you know, Venus, in your 10th house, square, your ascendant. I don't really see that as necessarily being a very tense relationship that Venus has with your ascendant I see. It's just, yeah, isn't tension,

Tristan Paylor 26:54

I think very energetic, but Netfix squares? Yeah, it's like, with Venus squares. It's sort of like the energy of attraction. You know, there's like an itch you have to scratch. There's a sense of desire, which is tension, but it's not. It doesn't feel abrasive.

Kyle Pierce 27:11

Well, yeah. Especially with an affix in general, but I just feel like when they're associated with the ascendant, I don't know, it's like, I just sort of start with like the house, the house that the planets in and just like, okay, that's coming through, like, yeah, kind of, regardless of the aspect, granted, when that planet is maybe one that clashes with the nature of the sign, you know, you might get more tension in the way that that planet is communicating our being expressed,

Ada Pembroke 27:40

I think that that's where the tension comes in. I mean, tension itself is, is neutral, like there are places where you definitely don't want tension. Like if you're at a diplomatic conference, you don't want there to be much tension. But like, if you have a, if you're driving a truck, and you have a load that could potentially scatter all over the highway, you want to tie that load down with tents, ropes, and I feel like sometimes, when you've got some tension, especially when it's a planet square, the ascendant, it it's very good at making sure that certain aspects of the ascendant are tied down, so to speak. So I have Pluto square, the ascendant and Pluto in Scorpio square, the ascendant and Leo and I if it wasn't for that Pluto, I would be the most vapid person who has ever talked to and I'm not talking about Leo risings, I'm just talking about myself, because I've got all these other things that are that are interacting with my ascendant as well. And that Pluto serves as this great ballast that gives me depth and intensity so that I'm not just like an air balloon flying off into space. Like everything is wonderful.

Kyle Pierce 28:55

Yeah, that's a no Pluto's good at, at popping things to get a little overinflated. I have opposing my son and Jupiter. And it's good at popping that, that ego that can get a little out of hand. Sometimes I can, I can get a little hold on myself, believe it or not. What? It's true, it's true.

Tristan Paylor 29:20

So it's making me think about something I'm learning in my druid training right now, because daily meditation is an important part of druid practice. And the meditation techniques that I'm being taught involves sitting in a position that I'm not used to sitting in for meditation, you're supposed to sit forward, not forward in your chair, but like, not like with your back leaning over, but sitting so that your back is not touching the back of the chair and your feet are flat on the floor and your hands are just on your thighs. So you look like an Egyptian statue. Essentially you look like one of the Egyptian pharaohs just sitting up very straight. And that's something I'm learning in My guide is there's a sort of sweet spot between relaxation and tension, where if your body is too relaxed, then it's going to impede your focus. And it's also going to sort of cut you off from the environment around you. If you're just sort of like slouching into yourself, you're cut off from what is outside of your body. If you're sitting up straight, you're not fully tense, but you're not fully relaxed either. Like you do have to tense certain muscles in order to keep your back straight. So I think that's, you know, perhaps an analogy for how hard and easy aspects work in astrology. Yeah, you know, when you look at a chart, there's a balance between sextiles and trines, and squares and opposition's and that means that you don't have too much relaxation. You know, planets in Trine are essentially giving each other progressive muscle relaxation exercises all the time. And if they were left to their own devices and allowed to run the show, they would just be they just be lounging on the couch. eating grapes. No tension whatsoever. Cuddle puddle. Yeah. And like, not having any tension means that you know, like, if you're doing martial arts or something that means like putting tension into different muscle groups. So you're not gonna get as much done if you're just a pile of jello all the time.

Kyle Pierce 31:22

Or you might get stuff done, but it might just be the same stuff.

Tristan Paylor 31:25

Yeah. Yeah. Rope chain trines

Ada Pembroke 31:28

love going on loops.

Kyle Pierce 31:30

That Yeah.

Ada Pembroke 31:32

Grand that you like, that's wonderful. Well, shall we

Kyle Pierce 31:35

maybe jump into our examples? Yeah, let's

Tristan Paylor 31:39

do it. Just before we jump in, just to remind our listeners, since we're going over example, charts, and we're going to be talking about a lot of charts, you will find a link in the show notes to a Google Doc. And you will find all the charts there. So just look for the name, and there will be a link to the chart so you can look at it and follow along.

Kyle Pierce 31:57

Yes, I definitely recommend taking a look at this one. I guess we're gonna do some first because

Tristan Paylor 32:04

Oh, yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, we can't the it's like Christmas, right. When you know, you get asked Do you want to open presents? Do you want to have breakfast? What's the first thing you want to do on Christmas morning is obviously open presents. So

Ada Pembroke 32:19

obviously,

Kyle Pierce 32:21

well, that's the thing with this particular chart. So this is the birth chart of Charles the 12, King of Sweden. It was born in June 17 1682 6:45am. Stockholm, Sweden do you have to mention that this would be put OS next to it. Because basically, around Charles's lifetime, they did a switch with the calendars. And basically erased was about 14 or 15 days from the calendar to basically make up for the discrepancy that ends up occurring when you use a 365 day a year. Calendar is that you end up falling off over years. And that's why we have like leap year, but anywho Yeah, Charles the 12. He was the king of Sweden. And he basically inherited an empire. Believe it or not, Sweden was an empire at one time. It was basically modern day Sweden, Finland, the northern portion of the Baltic states like Latvia, Estonia, and a nice little chunk of Northern Germany. We're all in Swedish possession. And it was a little bit of Russia to. And basically, he inherited the throne at like the height of Swedish power. And they were basically the dominant power in the Baltic. And it was actually very important part of the world at the time, because this is the age of sail. And all the Western powers like Great Britain, France, Spain, were building ships, lots and lots of ships. And to build ships. They needed wood, and tar and like hemp and stuff, and it was all stuff that you really could only get in the Baltic. And so Sweden had kind of built this empire, sort of against all odds, because it's a very sparse poor region, at this time, sparsely populated, not a lot of people there. And they were never, you know, comfortably in power. They basically were held together by having not a very large but very badass army. So we'll just describe the chart a little bit for everybody is that Charles was born with Leo rising the ascendant at about 14 degrees of Leo, with Saturn in Leo in the first house about five degrees and the Moon in Pisces about 25 degrees in the eighth hole sign house, Mars in Gemini but 20 degrees in the 11th hole sign house, and then just a stacked 12th House son in cancer ruling the ascendant about five degrees. You get Mercury and Venus and Jupiter all in a purr be tight conjunction about 20 to 2325 degrees. And you also have Pluto. I don't know about you guys, I have a hard time deciding whether or not I apply outer planets to charts that predate the discovery of outer planets, just because like, if we didn't know that they were there, are they still doing doing their thing? And another question in

Tristan Paylor 35:24

this, this is a whole podcast episode. We can't We can't get into this now. We will never see the end of this topic if we jump into this rabbit hole. Yeah, but it's a very good question.

Kyle Pierce 35:37

It is probably for that reason, I'm just going to omit talking about the outer planets in this chart, just because it's already a lot there. And we want to focus on the trend.

Ada Pembroke 35:45

But, but I'm an evolutionary astrologer after

Kyle Pierce 35:50

Pluto. Oh, yeah. Well, it is interesting. I mean, you got Pluto pretty close with the with Mercury and Venus there. Yeah. A conjunction bit. Uranus is like square Jupiter. You know, there's there's stuff there that like could be relevant. That were the midheaven Yes. And I it was a rather Plutonian figure. He was pretty extreme. And that's kind of all over his chart, but will really want I want to focus on with Charles the 12 is this trine between the moon and Pisces 25 degrees and Jupiter, in cancer at 25 degrees. 36 minutes. This is a really tight applying Trine, the moon is applying very closely. What is it like? It's within 30 minutes. So substantially less than a degree. And there is a mutual reception between the two. Because the moon rules cancer, and traditionally, Jupiter rules Pisces, so they are in each other signs. So this is a super strong relationship between these two planets. But they're in the eighth and 12th house. So these are two houses that are traditionally considered to be kind of negative houses tend to include more difficult experiences. Right? And this shows up for Charles, it's often a very interesting way. And I'll try to keep the history simple. But basically, he became king about the age of 15. And at that time, Sweden is surrounded by countries that really want a piece of Sweden's empire. You know, they're sort of tired of Sweden, dominating the Baltic, Russia in particular, they really want to break into into the Baltic trade. They basically been landlocked, because of Sweden, sort of icing them out. And Peter the Great, basically the the great nemesis of Charles to 12. So not long after Charles becomes king, the nations of Russia, Denmark, Norway, which I mean, they weren't a personal union. So think of Denmark and Norway as being kind of the same country at this time. And the Elector of Saxony, who was also the king of the Polish Lithuanian, Lithuanian Commonwealth. So basically like the entire eastern chunk of Europe. So you get basically every country that surrounds Sweden, declaring war on Sweden, they got this new young king, they think that this is a really good time to pounce and take a bite out of the Swedish Empire while it's weak. And basically, this 18 year old kid says, whoa, dude, you really want to mess with me? Let's go. And so he basically invades Denmark really suddenly surrounds the Capitol and knocks Denmark and Norway out of the war. And then he quickly takes some ships over to it's called Ingria. Just think of work around where St. Petersburg is today, is controlled by Sweden at the time, and the Russians are trying to take it over. And he basically charges in with like, 10,000 Starving Swedes. It's like, basically winter. And he's just like, Nope, we gotta go, we gotta get him. We got to relieve this the siege that's happening. And he attacks an army of Russians, that is at least four times the size of Swedish army, and just destroys them just crushes them wins. And he loves it. He loves being at war.

While he didn't get the Russians to surrender, he sort of knock them out temporarily. And he's like, Alright, let's go after Poland or the the Elector of Saxony. Like we gotta knock these dudes out. And so one of the ways that I find this trend showing up is that you know, it's it's a moon Jupiter Trine, an exalted Jupiter nonetheless. Moon in Pisces. And it's just like, very happy, sort of mutual reception is like really nice. And the thing that like he was kind of a cold, austere dude, the This is not a guy who He never married, he actually probably never had sex with anybody in his whole life. He's just all about war. Loved it. And where is this taking place in the eighth and 12th house. And it's like, in the sort of danger zone, like finding joy, finding happiness in the danger zone. And there's even a, there was myths about him. He was like one of the last kings to lead armies, like engage in combat directly. And he would just sort of charge right in to the heat of the battle. And there were myths that he had like a spell that made him invincible that made it impossible to kill him. After like that battle that I mentioned between Russia and he took out an army that like many times the size, he found, like bullets, like in a scarf, and he did actually infected injured and he ultimately was killed in combat. But basically he, for about nine years, the whole of Europe was just sort of watching him like, what is this kid doing? He's defeating armies left and right, many times his size, he was eventually able to, like conquer all of the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth and like, overthrow the King. And then basically, he went the way of Hitler and Napoleon where they tried to invade Russia. And that was his downfall. He basically refused to make peace, very principled, dude. And Voltaire, who is an author, enlightenment, author of the 18th century, said, he wrote this book, it's actually the only biography ever wrote about Charles to 12. And he said, of Charles that the only weakness that Charles had was that he was just too perfect, that he was just too much of the exemplar of humanity, too. Just too good for this world, basically, but it was his like, his principles, and his basically his love of war, and his refusal to make peace, that basically he pushed his luck too far. And I think that's another component of this trine between the Moon and Jupiter is that it's, you know, very lucky. It's like he's protected. It's like, he was even like, the myth was that he had like a, some sort of guardian angel or something like protecting him. But that protection, that sense of invincibility, that love of danger at basically ends up being his undoing, is he just kept pushing it too far. And then even after he lost the first battle, he's like, nope, not quitting. Now. We're just going to keep going. And his ideas and plans and schemes got increasingly out there and not connected to reality. And he ends up you know, leading this wild invasion of Norway, trying to find a way to win this war, even though it's long lost, and he ends up getting shot in the head, possibly by one of his own men. Not really sure. But again, with that, that eight to 12 sort of trying, it's such an amazing Trine. The moon is actually kind of enclosed, because it's separating from a trine with Venus in cancer, and applying to one with Jupiter. But it's in the eighth and 12th It's like it sort of ends up steering him in the wrong direction, but also, maybe wearing off after a period of time.

Ada Pembroke 43:26

I mean, Jupiter has a really hard time knowing its limits. I mean, that's, that's the reason why we have Saturn and you know, Jupiter and Saturn are, are in that tension of opposites and it's Saturn's job to kind of come along and go, you know, no, you can't eat something bigger than your head Jupiter, you just can't. It sounds like that. That's a sign of Jupiter that was coming through in, in his story, you know, he, he went from success to success to success. And then he thought that he could eat Russia. And yeah, that sounds to me like a Jupiter that doesn't have Saturn kind of serving as a, you know, the lead shoes, making sure that the balloon doesn't float away.

Kyle Pierce 44:13

Yeah. Well, and that's what's interesting is he does have Saturn in his first house. And when it comes to like, descriptions of him personally, it's very stern, kind of austere guy. But when you get Saturn in Leo, which is interesting, it's an interesting symbol for a king, right? It's kind of two authoritative kind of planets. But it's like Saturn and Leo, is that he kind of conflated his identity with that of the nation, that you would use the king. But the king is me or the nation is me. I'm the king. I'm an extension of the nation. My will is that of my nation. You get a sort of weird sort of narcissism there where he was willing to give everything to the state, but he was the state. So it's like, Where does he end? And where does that all begin? When you think of planets in the 12th house too, as they don't really show up in his character, but they show up? Well, they showed up in his character when he was in battle, because that's when he would be like, Haha, gentleman, I believe the enemy wants to make me practice my writing today. Oh, and like he would just be this like really kind of goofy jovial dude when he was in battle, but all the rest of the time, didn't drink, didn't engage in sex, didn't engage in any sort of pleasure or anything. He would like wait around and cold rivers, he wanted bears when he was a teenager. He's just kind of like your ultimate badass. But with this sort of squishy, cancer stuff, sort of behind the scenes, he had kind of a softy side, which was interesting that we won't go into but when you just think of like, it's like those planets are granting him a lot of luck and fortune. But he's sort of dismissing the maybe the pleasure and abundance that they indicate. Yeah, I

Tristan Paylor 45:57

think this is such a good example, Kyle. And I think it's such a good example of how, how complicated interpreting symbolism can get when you have a benefic planet, like Jupiter exalted in cancer. And, you know, a generally life affirming and soft and gentle planet like the moon. When you think of isolated when you think of Jupiter and cancer trying the Moon in Pisces, you just think of, you know, lying on a sunny beach, the weather is perfect. You're relaxing, it's just a nice time. It's very nurturing. It's not stressful, but then you put those archetypes into places like the eighth and 12th houses. And like you said, you're no longer taking pleasure in, you know, lying on a beach or just enjoying the company of your loved ones or, or being in a safe, comfortable place. Now you're taking that pleasure in a place where there's a lot of danger. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's a great way of illustrating how multifaceted these symbols can be and how they show different sides of themselves in different contexts and sometimes show unexpected sides of themselves, depending on what context they're in. You know, the moon is is hunger and the moon in the eighth house is hunger for war. And it's getting all this lovely support from a Jupiter that agrees with it on everything. Yeah, yeah. The like, he had this sort of angel of luck, almost. And all of his endeavors is it's very fitting.

Kyle Pierce 47:33

Yeah. And his enemies would sort of undo themselves sometimes, too, like they would. That's why

Tristan Paylor 47:38

he wanted realism. Yeah. It's sort of Yeah, like, what is Jupiter doing in the 12th? House? It's under way you you undo in the 12th house and in the 12th house, jupiter is like, I'm going to protect you by undoing the efforts of your enemies.

Kyle Pierce 47:56

Yeah, it's, it's a really good example I find of the really complicated way the planets work in eighth and 12th. House, it's like you see them working. They're doing stuff for him. And yeah, a lot of opportunities to end this war, actually, in much more favorable terms, but he just it was it was like too much. He like that Sunny Beach for him for us maybe going on vacation and enjoying, you know, a sunny beach resort, chillin and cooling, you know, that was being on campaign for him. That's what he liked. That's what that's what gave his life meaning. And yeah, to his detriment, ultimately, and the detriment of many, many, many, many others, sadly, and Tom fire, which was just remembered.

Tristan Paylor 48:40

That's also an example of how something working out for you doesn't necessarily mean it's good for everybody else. You might look trends

Kyle Pierce 48:54

begin to stabilize and affirm things that you know, are not great.

Tristan Paylor 48:57

Somebody is trying can be somebody else's square. Yeah, yeah. It's a way that you're benefiting is on the backs of somebody else.

Kyle Pierce 49:07

Yeah, there's so much to this chart that I would love to dig into. But I want to make time for you guys. And I will probably save it for I'm gonna probably do a whole thing on on this guy one day, because there's so much detail in this chart in his life that's like, will make your mind explode. Because it's just wild. Yeah. What about you guys? What kind of samples do you have?

Tristan Paylor 49:31

I have I have a brief one. I didn't dive as deeply as you did. Kai

Kyle Pierce 49:37

spent 20 minutes ranting about

Ada Pembroke 49:39

that is a very tough act to follow.

Kyle Pierce 49:41

Yeah, I'm sorry. I know. It's where I want to stand for the end a little bit. My excitement got the better of me. That's my, between the 12th and eighth house and I do. I have not actively engaged in any combat with anyone but I love games of war and I Obviously, I'm fascinated by this guy. These topics of huge battles and wars and stuff, I think there's something about the eight and 12, like a trine between the two is like sort of protecting you or stabilizing you in endeavors of chaos and misfortune maybe, but also potentially facilitating, you know, energy that steers you in the direction of danger. So maybe watch out for your trains between they're all bad, but

Tristan Paylor 50:27

watch where they're taking you maybe, yeah, I think this is a good example of the way aspects work between houses, and how you can learn a lot about the houses by both about the houses and the aspects by looking at the aspects houses have to each other. So the fourth, eighth, and 12th all form a try. And they all have this harmonious, free flowing relationship, they sort of form their own little echo chamber in the chart, and they share a lot of really similar topics and death is one that all three of those houses share. So when you have, you know, supportive when you try and you know, when there are planets in those houses, it's kind of interesting, where it can be sort of like trines, in dark contexts, support in dark, darker contexts. I know like the eighth house often gets associated with inheritance, you could see like a fourth and eighth house Trine is, you know, representing like, benefits through some sort of dark circumstance.

Kyle Pierce 51:32

Trials, the top inherited one of the best armies in Europe. There you go. Or baby.

Tristan Paylor 51:40

What a life like I can't imagine maths at 15 years old, is being 15 years old and being told you are now the king of an empire. You have one of the world's most powerful armies at your disposal. What are you going to do? I was thinking about where I was going to get my next like, dime bag of weed when I was 15 years old. I was not I was not gonna rise up and do anything noteworthy and, you know, in the history of this planet?

Kyle Pierce 52:12

Well, that's the funny thing about Charles 12. We're gonna move on. But he did have a short period of that a little bit like he had a cousin, who was the Duke of Holstein gold tour, and his cousin came over. He's a little older. He's kind of cool. And he's like, Hey, Charles, do you want a party and he's like, okay, and they partied a lot. And he got into all these shenanigans would show up at the palace like drunk, and he would play all these pranks on people. But then his grandmother was like, since I can remember exactly what she said, but it shamed him. And from that day on, he's like, I will never drink again granted back then you you had to drink because that's how you purified your water and stuff, but he never really drank anything more than like watered down beer from that day on. And he forced suck source suck. Is that an Asana word? Key? All right, yeah, yeah. Of all pleasures and all indulgences. Other than, you know, I'd say indulging in in war

Tristan Paylor 53:12

on I feel a trine between the Yeah, well the train on screen the eighth and the 12 to being about because the 12th and the eighth have so much to do a sacrifice I think is also relevant to my example a little bit not quite as relevant definitely not as extreme as my example comes from my personal life. I feel bad using so many examples from my own life but

Kyle Pierce 53:38

I'd love to know the most about that's the thing I'm

Tristan Paylor 53:41

on the inside and the other ones are not from my personal life. So but it's it's interesting too, because the examples from your own personal life don't tend to be quite so extreme as Charles's 12 was just like these are regular people which can be kind of grounding where it's like this is what astrology looks like for the rest of us who are not Charles the 12 or Kim Kardashian who fascinating chart so my example is my partner actually might try an example and it is a another Jupiter Moon Trine involving the eighth house only this time it's the fourth in the nice so I put his birth data in the Zoom chat. I don't know if both of you have his chart pulled up.

Kyle Pierce 54:28

All and big I know about the spreadsheet sort of enjoys situations, likes hiking and stuff like being

Tristan Paylor 54:37

somewhat more extreme or dangerous to like rock climbing or his cupcake cannons and shooting his best friend with them. Yeah, setting rockets

Kyle Pierce 54:47

he has a moon by sign a moon trine Saturn

Tristan Paylor 54:51

two so that's right. Yeah, there's a grand Trine collective adversity. That's That's his favorite phrase. Yeah. Dude For you, Okay, sweet. All right, so I will I will get into it. So my partner's name is Keith, if you are looking for the chart we're talking about in the show notes just look for Keith in the list of charts and you can see his chart which is interestingly relevant to a lot of what we were just talking about because there is actually a grand Trine by assign based grand trine between the fourth eighth and 12th houses in fire science.

Kyle Pierce 55:29

Saturn strengths on two. Yeah, between the 12th and in fourth,

Tristan Paylor 55:35

yeah, all three of those houses have planets in them. So they're all all talking to each other. So he has Capricorn rising the sun in Aries and Jupiter in Aries in the fourth house, the moon in leo in the eighth house and Saturn and Sagittarius in the 12th house. So you can see that relationship and as Kyle was saying, Keith's favorite phrase is elective adversity. He's the kind of person who moves towards what is challenging and difficult and enjoys dangerous activities like making fireworks and cupcake cannons and going rock climbing and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, there's another example of the you've got the moon Jupiter trine between the fourth and the eighth houses and you also have you know, finding pleasure and enjoyment in danger, although too much less of an extreme. Charles.

Kyle Pierce 56:34

Fortunately, Keith wasn't born a king. So

Tristan Paylor 56:36

yeah, I think he he'd be a good king, I'd like to think he would be a good king. But instead he was born in, you know, Ontario, Canada, where there are not kings, and he was not born into a royal family.

Ada Pembroke 56:54

What you mean, he's not the king of Ontario.

Tristan Paylor 56:57

He's not the king of Ontario. Yet, but I really like the trine between the Moon and Jupiter in his chart, it's quite close, it's separating by a bit, but it's very close. So the Moon is at nine degrees of Leo and the eighth house. Jupiter is at eight degrees of Aries in the fourth house. And something about Keith is that he considers himself to be very lucky person. It's one of the traits that he identifies with very strongly. He is a very optimistic person. And it's an interesting balance in our relationship because I have a million anxiety disorders and I am very good at thinking about how things will go wrong. I'm very good at figuring out why something is not going to work. He's the opposite he is all solutions he's really good at figuring out how things are going to work and trusting that things are going to work and feeling confident and what he chooses to do it's really that trine between the fire signs you know Jupiter in Aries is pretty confident like strong Jupiter energetic Jupiter are willing to because it's you know, the sign of Mars, this is a Jupiter who's willing to take action, perhaps a little bit more than Jupiter and other signs who's not, you know, just kind of resting on his couch, but actually willing to jump up and and make changes to the see through his goals. But, you know, in a very sort of confident, optimistic, benevolent, cheerful kind of way. And that really shows through for Keith, and I think, like, from the outside, you know, I can definitely see how he's been lucky, but I don't. Because again, it's sort of a more everyday example. It's not like Charles the 12, somehow miraculously, just like winning and winning and winning over and over again, like, he doesn't have that kind of extreme life. And I think that the luck component is not just like, objectively being lucky, but it's also just part of his attitude, like, he feels lucky. And that generates luck. And he's not sort of, you know, adverse circumstances do not drag him down, he doesn't see this, as, you know, this is this is the end of my goals. It's more like, I will get through this, and I, you know, have faith that this thing is ultimately going to work out and it usually does, which is very good for me to be around that kind of attitude. Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna say something?

Kyle Pierce 59:29

Well, I was not to make it about Trump's fault again, but like, you think about having a similar sort of situation or just luck sometimes is very much a subjective experience, you know, like Charlottesville, for example, had a lot of unlucky stuff like was gained getting piled by nations that, you know, surrounded this country and with no allies. And there's a lot of things that went wrong through the campaign and eventually things went very, very, very wrong, but He was able to maintain this attitude of optimism, even when the circumstances didn't necessarily match, you know, like, like, oh, we just have to get through, you know, we can we have enough to make this happen. Even though everybody from the outside might say no way, there's no way that can work. You know, if you have that, like inherent optimism, you're going to be like, yes, it can I see the path, you know, even if it doesn't seem obvious to everyone else. And sometimes, that's what you need to push you through, and overcome things that other people wouldn't necessarily be able to. But other times, you know, you can, you can lead you, you know, a strain to,

Tristan Paylor 1:00:41

yeah, luck has a lot to do with Outlook. And because we're all lucky and unlucky in different ways, but some of us lean more towards the negative in our interpretation of our lives. And some of us lean more towards the positive, you know, like, Keith has experienced plenty of adverse circumstances in his lives, but he tends to see the ways in which he is blessed. And I feel like that is a very, yeah, the symbolism of a Trine from Jupiter really shows through in that kind of attitude, like when when Jupiter has your back, that is Jupiter's attitude that, you know, you're, you're gonna get through this and look at all of the good things that have happened for you and focus on those good things and focus on the positive, which, you know, sounds cheesy, and I know, there's a big cultural movement right now against toxic positivity, and I think rightfully so. But sometimes, like, Yeah, it sounds cliche, but looking on the bright side is the best thing you can do for your psychological health. And whatever it is, you're trying to get done. So you know, that little dose of a Trine from Jupiter saying, hey, like, think about all the ways that you're lucky. And then you focus on all the ways that you're lucky and you start to feel better, and you start getting up and doing things with more confidence, and then that ends up actually breeding real objective luck.

Ada Pembroke 1:01:59

Jupiter is also the planet of wisdom. And one of the ways that positivity can express itself is as a insistence that no matter what happens, you're going to get something out of it. You're going to at least learn something even if the only thing that you learn is I don't want to do that again.

Tristan Paylor 1:02:15

Yeah. Which is a valuable lesson. Yeah. I think that's very much Keith attitude. It's like I didn't I didn't lose in that situation. I learned that that thing wasn't for me, whereas I'm a grumpier person. And I'm like, that was a waste of my damn time.

Kyle Pierce 1:02:29

Yeah. It vacillate between the two mindsets.

Tristan Paylor 1:02:36

There's also the try and as I mentioned, is going on between the fourth and eighth houses and property and real estate have been really important in Keith's life. So I think that's kind of interesting because you know, the eighth house is about finances and investment and debt as well. You know, having a mortgage is an eighth house topic. And the fourth house has to do with home and property so having that trine between those two these are you know, working on homes you know, we're building a little tiny home Airbnb right now. And you know, he's he's owned a couple of homes and renovated them like it's a lot of work, but he's, he's very good at it. And so I can kind of see that, you know, that little bit of luck going through it's it's not it's it's luck in an interesting way. Because I think, you know, for people in our generation, like millennials, owning a home is often a pipe dream for most of us. For previous generations, it was a lot easier to become a homeowner for our generation, it's really hard to stop renting it's it's really hard to actually become a homeowner and Keith has the skills to be able to take property that isn't in great shape and turn it into a great property and those skills I think, you know, that that can be seen as the sort of luck factor where you know, even though he is a millennial, he's able to do this and not because he's wealthy but because he has the practical skills to be able to turn a less expensive home into a more expensive home

Kyle Pierce 1:04:11

Well, that's very eighth house to mean you get to like, you know, broadly like the resources of other people but I find like it's like the stuff that other people when mainstream right treasure, right, it's like the get like a scavenging quality with the eighth house, but it's just like finding the value and other people's stuff the stuff that maybe they threw away. Yeah. Or that they didn't value enough and you know, fixing it up repairing it, or making use of it yourself. You see that with with in war all the time where when you win a battle, you get to take all their stuff. You could loot the enemy and use all their weapons, take their stuff, make it yours.

Tristan Paylor 1:04:55

Yeah, I think the other thing I wanted to mention about this train as I think it's We've seen an example of how trains can work out well for the person who's making use of that energy in their own life or making use of that luck in their own life. But that doesn't mean it's going to work out well for the people around them. But I think this is an example of a train that actually works really well for the people around the person who has it. And there's, that's good food. It's yeah, it's great for me and gets it's great for everybody around him. Because, you know, he brings solutions and optimism and just general goodwill and benevolence and also an attitude of service and being very giving and self sacrificing, which is very eighth house to me. And that's where I think the fact that this Trine involves the eighth house, I think the way it plays out in this case is that like Keith is someone who is very motivated to take care of other people and very willing to make sacrifices for other people. And so that that trine between the Moon and Jupiter isn't just sort of like making him lucky and optimistic, but it's actually really supporting the people around him as well. And I think that's one of the the nice things about the eighth house that we maybe don't talk about enough is that it is a place where we just do good things for other people. And we actually stick it out with people, even when they're in difficult circumstances, like an eighth house friendship, or an eighth house relationship is not a fairweather relationship. It's like, if we're in the eighth house together, we're going through everything together good and bad. And I'm not going to leave your side just because you're having a health issue, or you're, you know, going through grief, or, yeah, I'm not just here, you know, for good times, like, I'm actually here, for all of it. And that's, you know, another way you can see how complex these relationships between the planets are and how they sort of reflect the complexities of our own lives that again, we have this sort of the Moon and Jupiter, you know, both represent ease and comfort and just feeling nice. And sometimes that the weakness of Moon Jupiter trines can be that, you know, as we've discussed, that we don't want to look at the bad stuff, we just want things when they're nice and cozy. But when you've got that relationship happening, and the eighth house is involved, the context has changed. And now we're actually willing to, you know, be the Moon and Jupiter in situations where we don't just get to be cozy and comfortable all the time.

Kyle Pierce 1:07:31

Totally, totally. Yeah.

Ada Pembroke 1:07:33

I love that we're talking about a moon in the eighth house in the context of triumphs, because I feel like, you know, a lot of times people will see a moon in the eighth house and will be like, automatically snap to everyone you know, is going to die, and it's going. And this is just really opening up that symbolism. I mean, Jupiter expands and here we are expanding,

Tristan Paylor 1:07:57

expanding the there are no limits to what the eighth house can do. Because Jupiter is on the job.

Ada Pembroke 1:08:04

Oh, no. Yeah, but I think that necessarily mean that you know, everything is going to be ruined forever, just because you have the moon in the eighth house.

Tristan Paylor 1:08:17

Yeah, and I think it's really important to, I think that's why it's important to give those sorts of everyday examples, because it's really easy to see extreme symbolism playing out in the charts of very famous people who are generally famous, because their lives were truly remarkable in some way. They were extraordinary, for better or for worse. So you can see the best and worst than their lives. And you can see this symbolism playing out in really dark ways. But for most of us, that's not how our lives go, you know. And we've we've got to be really careful in practicing Astrology, that astrology doesn't become something that just feeds anxiety. And it's that sort of that balance between we need if we use astrology as a language to talk about our experiences, it needs to be able to hold the good and the bad, but it also needs to not make us unnecessarily anxious and scared. There's nothing in a birth chart that you need to be scared of. Yeah,

Kyle Pierce 1:09:15

I absolutely agree. Reach. Yeah.

Tristan Paylor 1:09:21

Does not is not scary. You can have things in the eighth house and you're going to be fine. And people who don't have things in the eighth house, they still have to deal with death. Yeah, we all do don't have all the house of what our eighth houses look like. Yeah, so. Yeah, also that, but also don't be scared of the house.

Kyle Pierce 1:09:39

Yeah, not everything about the houses is about death and terrible things.

Tristan Paylor 1:09:43

Sometimes it's about shooting your best friend with a cupcake cannon and you just had some very unconventional fun.

Ada Pembroke 1:09:51

Or you can inherit Elvis as money like his daughter did during an eighth house. Oh, yeah.

Tristan Paylor 1:09:56

That's such. Speaking of speaking of why Old celebrity examples. I think maybe I should search for a link if anyone is anyone is now more curious about different eighth house examples. I think there's an astrology podcast episode where they get into Alice's daughter inheriting money and how that changed her life and how that played into the eighth house was very, very interesting story.

Ada Pembroke 1:10:22

It was one of the ones on annual perfections I think.

Tristan Paylor 1:10:25

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. The ruler of the second in the eighth

Kyle Pierce 1:10:29

in the in the second.

Ada Pembroke 1:10:31

Yeah. Okay, so I have really down to earth example. Nice. He's a resident of California where he lives with his wife and two children. Yeah, no, it's Prince Harry.

Kyle Pierce 1:10:44

Oh, yeah. Just like as his mother, Capricorn rising Saturn in Scorpio.

Ada Pembroke 1:10:52

I have got a princess Di's chart. I really do

Kyle Pierce 1:10:56

actually notice mother grandmother, my dad, I haven't actually looked. I don't think in a while.

Ada Pembroke 1:11:02

I'm such an anglophile, like, makes me think that Prince Harry is going to be

Kyle Pierce 1:11:05

the king somehow, but I don't know.

Ada Pembroke 1:11:08

Well, I mean, maybe that would be kind of, well, it would be tragic for for the royal family, but it would be really interesting. Okay.

Kyle Pierce 1:11:17

I'm not as well versed on the royal family. My partner Megan is very well versed on it as well. I know a lot of people who are, but it's why I don't like to say too much. Because I feel like there are people that know more about it than I do. I don't want to.

Ada Pembroke 1:11:31

Well, I'm not too invested. I watched the crown religiously, but Oh, yeah. I love that show so much. But I just find Harry and his grandmother's charts so fascinating. These days, I've got to do with a thorough study of the royal family. But so for those of you who aren't up on your British royal family, Prince Harry is the second son there. You know, in royal families, there's the air in the sparrow and He is the Spirit in of the British Royal Family. His brother is Prince William and his father is Prince Charles, who is the longest sitting heir to the throne. Definitely in the history of England, but it might be the known history of the world. Oh, wow. Yeah, he's like in his 70s. And he's still waiting for her, his mother to to get out of the way and let him do his thing. So yeah. Prince Harry is highly unlikely to ever be king. And I think that the clearer that has become, to him, the freer he has become as a person. He has Uranus in the 12th house and he has that, you know, situation where everybody else can see how much of a rebel he is and he clearly has no idea. So he's most famous recently for leaving the royal family which is appropriate for somebody with Uranus in the 12th house. He married an American actress, the former Meghan Markel, who's now the Duchess of Sussex. And it rocked the UK because she is African American, and she was an American, and she was an actress and the royal family kind of has a history with American actress is making trouble and she came in and she, in my opinion, tried her best, but she had a really, really difficult time with the tabloids. And if you know your British history, Harry's mother, Princess Diana also had a terrible time with the paparazzi and ended up dying because of it. And so when Harry and Megan got into a situation where they were threatened by the PA paparazzi, and they could reasonably taken out because Harry is extremely unlikely to take the throne. They they left they moved to first to Canada and then to America. And I think that Harry has withdrawn from some of his titles, though he still stylists himself, the Duke of Sussex. And so he has the sun in Virgo, and he has Capricorn rising and he has the Moon in the fifth house and he's got the Moon in the fifth house and the son in the ninth house and the Trine that I am interested in that he has is that Sun Moon Trine. Both of them are in earth signs. So there is a sense of practicality these two planets are really interested in pragmatic questions by sign but they're in the fifth From the ninth house and the the son, in the ninth house, this son tends to to really like to be in the ninth house, the son rejoices in the ninth. And in in general, the son likes to be at the top of the sky. And it's not close to the midheaven. But it is really close to the top of the chart. And the moon is down below the horizon where it likes to be anyway. And the moon is in the fifth house in the house of pleasure and children. And so you've got the situation things really heated up for Harry after he had children, and started worrying about the security of his children. And so you've got the sun in Virgo in the ninth house. That is a philosophical ideological placement in Virgo, which is a Virgo superpower and I'm not saying this ironically, I'm saying this legitimately Virgo superpower is its critical ability. Virgo is excellent at critical thinking and it's also excellent at that seeing what's wrong. And we we really need people in, in society who are excellent at seeing what's wrong for exactly the reasons that we've been exploring with,

with the previous charts, because you know, if you have this endless optimism, and you think that you can swallow Russia, you're going to get yourself and everybody else around you in trouble. And Virgo is one of the the forces that kind of, you know, is the the lead shoes in the situation is like, you know, maybe if you know, nobody has ever successfully launched a land war in Asia, we should actually not do that. And you've got this, you know, son that that's the giant spotlight in the sky, in this highly critical place, shining a light on all of these dysfunctional things about the royal family and about British society. Megan and Harry had this very famous interview where they were interviewed by Oprah and they just aired all of the dirty laundry in a way that is really not seen as appropriate. And in the British Royal Family. And there's that sun in Virgo just shining a light on on everything that's negative. And it's trying the moon in. In Taurus, which is a place where the moon likes to be as well. The Moon is exalted in Taurus. So it's a well placed Moon as well, in the house of pleasure. And you can see this Trine acting out in his life as this predator natural ability to see everything that is wrong and shine a light on all that is wrong in an easy aspect with a moon that really wants comfort and pleasure with his children. And so I can kind of see why he ended up. You know, being acutely aware of everything that was wrong with the situation, acutely aware of his children and making an exit as soon as he possibly could from that situation.

Kyle Pierce 1:18:27

doing what's best for his children, but also his, his wife, which is the seventh house.

Tristan Paylor 1:18:33

Yeah, that's right. He has because he's a Capricorn rising, his seventh house is cancer. So it's ruled by the moon. So it's all the moon is all it's a symbol that combines everyone in his immediate family, really his partner and his kids. And it's interesting, because, you know, the sun in the ninth is a great symbol for someone who has a very high profile sort of existence. You know, the sun is associated with royalty, traditionally, as ADA said, it rejoices in the ninth house and the traditional aim for the ninth house is the house of God. So this is a House of Kings and high priests and people who have authority because of some divine link granted, right. And, you know, being a house that's high up above the horizon, you know, that's pretty close to the top of the sky. You know, the sun is in the ninth house pretty close to solar noon. So, you know, you can imagine the sun at its zenith, sort of, you know, that's most visible, shining, it's raised down upon all of us who has big glorious thing in the sky. So it's a very, very cool symbol to see in the chart of a royal but, you know, being like ADA said, and that sort of critical sign and the act that you know, cause such a stir and that led to all of this sort of very open criticism of the royal family was just like at its heart, a guy just trying to do what was right for his family, which is Moon and Taurus and the fifth house is now But it's It's concerned with what is near and dear and immediate. And it's just like, it's such a funny circumstance like, that's the thing. So if, yeah, if it wasn't Prince Harry, if it was me, or ADA or Kyle, who just made a decision that like, I'm gonna step away from some things in my life because it's what's best for my partner and children, it would not be making tabloids, it would not be causing this big stir, but because it's Prince Harry and he has this influence and high visibility in the world. His very mundane decision had very huge implications. And the reason behind the decision was not just like, Oh, my career's getting in the way, it's like, my family is legitimately in danger. Because of how high profile we are.

Kyle Pierce 1:20:49

Yeah, speaking of trying to Mercury in Virgo Trine, Jupiter in Capricorn, as first and there's sort of like an emphasis on that theme, as well with like that, you know, very, like critical mercury, and Jupiter in Capricorn, it's almost like shedding light on, on corrupted sort of structures or systems, or Capricorns. Very good at, like, identifying the, the things that are wrong with long standing social institutions, you know, like the royal family and being like, in his first house, like born into it, it's like, where he comes from, it's who he is, to some degree. But, you know, maybe not sitting well with him, it's not comfortable, you know, he's not comfortable with with that sort of role, or sees, you know, he sees the faults and sees the problems in it, and ends up speaking on it being known for that.

Tristan Paylor 1:21:41

Yeah. And it's like, there's a lot, it's a lot of harmony. You know, these three houses, there's something in the first, the fifth and the ninth house in his chart. So by sign there's a grand Trine going on between those three houses, there's a lot of harmony between all these planets and earth signs in his chart. It's not that the circumstances of his life have necessarily been easy, but he's able to have enough agreement within himself to make this decision with confidence, even though it means rocking the boat in a really big way. And I think that's another way that you know, trends can work where it's like, I have this sort of inner knowing or, you know, these, these different areas of my life or parts of myself are in agreement that this is the direction we have to go in and even though it's really hard, there's enough sort of support whether internally or just around me in my immediate environment in order for me to take that hard road. And given the planets involved like Jupiter and Capricorn. You know, JUPITER is exalted in cancer, so it's considered to be in its fall in Capricorn. So when we have Jupiter in Capricorn, like I was saying, this is you know, a Jupiter that's starting to see the shortcomings of the social systems that Jupiter normally helps to uphold and stabilize and Capricorn Jupiter's sort of a little less naive, starting to see the limitations of those structures. So even though you have a Trine it's still again, another sort of complicated context for those trines to be playing out in.

Ada Pembroke 1:23:14

I love how you're bringing up the the Jupiter and Capricorn issue there. One of my favorite descriptions of Jupiter in Capricorn is description that Austin Copic talked about on the astrology podcast, he said that Jupiter in Capricorn is like it's your job to cushion things and you're working in a bubble wrap factory and there's no more bubble wrap at the bubble wrap factory. So I think that, uh, you know, yes, what he was facing was legitimately very scary. But at the same time, I think that that Jupiter is inclined to see all of the ways in which he is supposed to be a protective influence. He's the person who was born into the royal family and he's very low aware of his privilege and yet he has that Jupiter in the first house that is very aware of the ways in which he wants to be protective and he can't be protective in the way that he wants to be. And so I think that maybe you know that happy sun and moon Trine in the ninth and the fifth is kind of you know, you mentioned this a little already grounded but less than the sense of you know, grounded in an earthy sense but grounded more in the sense of, you know, teenagers get grounded for for staying out past curfew kind of way. It's like it brings in this this negativity like you look at the sun and moon and it's like, oh, everything's wonderful then you see the Jupiter it's like wow

Kyle Pierce 1:24:52

it's it's like it's still trying to be Jupiter it's still trying to like Yeah, bring about you know, positive ends its nature is well intention. And, but it's sort of having to do that through a topic that is limiting or I don't know, it's a, you know that that couldn't have been an easy decision to make being pulled, you know, sort of between the obligation to a sense of right and wrong maybe or a sense of duty and obligation to the family, its wife, you know, children, but also the family that he's born into.

Tristan Paylor 1:25:20

Right. Noticing another example. Sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say this is this was great.

Ada Pembroke 1:25:26

Thank you. I literally pulled this one off the top of the stack of tabs. So I'm glad that is a good example. But I'm noticing as we're talking that there's also this trine between Jupiter and Capricorn and Mercury in Virgo, and it's a much closer aspect. And, you know, yeah, Jupiter is definitely involved in that grand Trine involving the sun and moon, but very often that Jupiter is expressed through that mercury, he's known for what he says in public. And that that mercury is in a very powerful position being in Virgo. And so you've got this, this Jupiter that is not in a very good position, kind of influencing that mercury that is very strong.

Kyle Pierce 1:26:22

Yeah, and what Mercury is in the superior position of that Trine, and my general rule on that is like, you know, maybe give like a bump to the planet in superior position where they're gonna have a little more influence. It's kind of like they can call upon the other planet. And they have a lot of influence on maybe the planet, they're in the superior aspect with. And yeah, it's like mercury, you can sort of call upon Jupiter. Call upon the experiences that Jupiter describes and, you know, speak on them, but also maybe influence what Jupiter is doing. So yeah, I'm looking forward. On that, that structure, that that may be corrupt structure that Jupiter in Capricorn is describing. Corruption is a complicated word. It's a loaded word. You know, not that everything about the structure may be bad. It just may be that, you know, it needs to be reformed, changed in some way. Yeah,

Tristan Paylor 1:27:17

corruption is often kind of a, I think we often use it to say, like, everything is ruined, but it's more so that like, there are flaws in this system. And if those flaws are not corrected, and they are going to lead to really dangerous outcomes, but it's more it's like corrupt ability, like metals can rust, that is corruption. Something that is rusting is corrupted. Yeah. You have to fix it, or scrap it and get a new thing.

Kyle Pierce 1:27:46

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So shall we move on to the square aspect?

Ada Pembroke 1:27:54

Yes. Do it.

Kyle Pierce 1:27:57

Or moving on to the square aspect? Yeah. What do you guys tend to think about when you think about the square?

Tristan Paylor 1:28:04

Well, it is the aspect of Mars. So square is not a gentle, easygoing, relaxed relationship. It creates heat, it creates prickliness, it creates motion. dynamic tension is a good key phrase for a square, it can be about conflict, but it can also be about just lighting a fire under your butt and getting you motivated. This is sorta it's creating friction. So two planets that are in a square with each other are having a conversation that might be pretty heated or is about a pretty heated or controversial topic doesn't necessarily mean that the planets are fighting, but whatever they're talking about, you know, they're not making pleasant small talk. They're not discussing the weather. Unless they're talking about like a raging hurricane or something very Mars like, yeah,

Kyle Pierce 1:28:57

it's very energized, for sure. Feel like it's either can be combative, or can be a little like supercharged, a little hyperactive, even. Yeah, obviously, depending on on the planets involved, the being the nature of Mars, but I think the thing that always sort of bugged me maybe about especially when you're reading traditional texts, and even just the modern sort of take on squares is you sort of default to it being negative, especially traditional. It's like the was one of the evil aspects. And

Tristan Paylor 1:29:30

it's the, it's the aspect of moderate Amity or hatred in the picot tricks and moderation is the aspect of perfect hatred.

Kyle Pierce 1:29:41

Ah, yes. Oh

Ada Pembroke 1:29:41

my goodness.

Tristan Paylor 1:29:43

I love that hyperbolic language in traditional texts.

Kyle Pierce 1:29:50

There's certainly a potential I guess, for that it can be but it's um, I guess when I just think about it. It's like you have the houses right and So, especially in ancient astrology, we're obsessed with, like angularity. The more angular a planet is the more active and energized more opportunities it has. However, when planets or Angular with each other, we don't like that that's evil, right? So I don't know, if you'd like there's a bit of a contradiction built into that. And wow, I think that contradiction is part of the beautiful symmetry of astrology. Because life is like that. It's filled with sort of, like MC Escher esque sort of infinite loops. And like, you know, where does this begin? But, um, yeah, you look like you have something to say, I want to what do you have to say?

Ada Pembroke 1:30:49

Well, I have to be contrary, again. In the trends episode, I said that I didn't like trines, I actually like squares quite a lot. Part of that is my own personal bias, I have a ton of squares in my chart. And like, most, yes, and most of them are in Angular houses. So I, squares involving Angular houses are kind of a weird exception, because they're so powerful. And because astrology likes the angles, so much squares involving the angles kind of are looked on a bit more fondly. But there's still like extreme conflict between them. I mean, the tension between your relationships and your career tensions between your career and your identity, tensions between your family of origin and your partner, like, these are some of the things that just absolutely fill advice columns, and those are squares involving the angles. So still, like extremely powerful and has the potential to be extremely difficult for people. But the thing that I love about squares is that there is so much potential for creativity, and there isn't just potential like you, you absolutely are required if you have a square to figure out how to be creative, or it's going to be constantly undercutting you. Like, for instance, you know, if you have a planet in cancer and plant in an area, that's like, you know, the the prime directive for cancer is self protection. And that's been the prime direction, a directive for areas is risk and putting yourself in danger. And how do you reconcile those two things? If you've got a square like that, in your chart, it is a huge deal. And you know, that question is going to come up continually until you fix it. And, you know, how do you reconcile those two mutually conflicting needs, I think is like one of the big questions of squares. Yeah,

Tristan Paylor 1:32:51

you become like the health and safety inspector for your, your workplace, you know, who's responsible for spotting danger, and alerting people to danger. So you're kind of like blending the imperative of Aries with the imperative of cancer.

Ada Pembroke 1:33:08

I love that.

Kyle Pierce 1:33:09

I think you made a good point too, about, you know, having Squares Between like Angular houses does seem like almost like the appropriate place for squares. Granted, I've seen, you know, they can work in other areas, obviously. But the thing I actually have noticed with people who do have a lot of planets on their angular houses, is they're busy, they're always just doing stuff. It's like, all the main areas of their life are just lit up, and highly active. And while Yeah, obviously, like, spending time with your romantic partner, and your seventh house is going to conflict with your 10th house most of the time, just in the sense that when you're doing one, you're not necessarily doing the other one. But just I'm thinking about it in those terms in that, I guess I like to think of squares. First and foremost, as energizing, like as just active, they're very active, the kind of activity that's being indicated, can be, you know, more challenging, or more pleasant or more, or both, you know, in fact, most of the time, any aspect is going to be a combination of, of good and bad things.

Tristan Paylor 1:34:16

We do have a previous episode, grand crosses and the birth chart of dough. Yeah. Yeah, in October, where my friend Jack wrote in and was kind enough to share her chart and she has Grand Cross in the angular houses in all Cardinal science. So if you want us, you know, to want to hear us getting into an example of exactly what we're talking about here. That's a good episode to listen to. And she's a very good example of somebody who like very much it's very type A wants to have it all is busy and all the major areas of life and is kind of trying to juggle all of that and like somehow manages to do it.

Kyle Pierce 1:35:00

Yeah, I think that's the essence of the square just moving constantly. And they require I think you were making good points to ADA with the it's like they require constant negotiation. So yeah, you do have to be very creative with them. Because I think if you're trying to find a good like, work life balance, you know, you have to be very creative with your time. And sometimes you have to find ways to do two things at the same time that maybe kill two birds with one stone, or Absolutely. I did want to touch on maybe before we get into some of our square examples, I had a message from a listener recently, not that long ago, asking for a little more clarity on on the idea of overcoming, or superior and inferior aspects, or planets in the superior position of an aspect versus being in the inferior. So just wanted me get some clarity on that. And you know what that means? And maybe we can talk a little bit about that maybe even during our examples about about that, I guess? I don't know, how do you guys end up treating the planet that's say earlier, in zodiacal order, or on the to the right, Tristan, you will explain this better than I will define what the planet in the superior position is. I'll make it complimentary.

Tristan Paylor 1:36:21

So you'll you'll hear a few different terms to describe this, overcoming as one that our listener wrote in, as I thank you for your question. Asking you know about the term overcoming that we use, sometimes you'll hear it referred to as domination. Sometimes you'll hear her referred to as a superior planet versus an inferior planet. In some cases, you might even hear it referred to as being upon the 10th. So all these terms essentially refer to an interpretive principle that comes from Hellenistic astrology, where the aspect that is the planet in an aspect that is earlier in zodiacal order, which will be on the right hand side of the configuration is seen as the planet that kind of has the upper hand in that configuration. Now when it comes to a configuration of tension, like the square, that interpretive principle gets used a lot, which is why we're talking about it here with the squares. So to give an example, say you've got the sun and Aries in the 10th house, and you've got Saturn in Capricorn in the seventh house. So these two planets are squaring each other. Saturn is earlier in zodiacal order. And if you just look at the chart, if you look at the 90 degree angle they're making with each other Saturn is on the right hand side of that 90 degree angle. So this can be tricky to spot especially since like in the example I gave, it's not always intuitive that Capricornus earlier, like it's pretty obvious if you're looking at say, Gemini and Leo that Gemini is the earlier sign it comes before Leo. But sometimes it's a sign that is late in the Zodiac that's actually earlier in the order in the configuration. So it can be kind of confusing, it's hard to explain without a visual. But what you can do that is a foolproof trick is just like physically rotate the chart you're looking at. So that the square is showing up at a 90 degree angle with one of the planets at the very top of the chart, just literally physically rotate it and then you'll see the one that is on the right hand side of that 90 degree angle is the planet that is overcoming the other planet.

Kyle Pierce 1:38:48

Yeah, I like to just imagine myself standing in the middle of the chart. And like I'm looking at it from like a bird's eye view. And I just have a planet in any aspect. It's not, it's not limited to the square saralee, I would say the same principles sort of apply with sextiles and trines. Probably quincunx is as well, conjunctions. And opposition's there's kind of maybe different ways of approaching that. But um, I just imagine which planet is my right side, if I'm standing in the middle of the chart, and which planet is on my left the planet on the right side, it would be in the superior position. And one of the things that I like to think about too, with just maybe interpreting it, or maybe the one of the many ways is you do have this sort of relationship with time. Right? The planet that's in superior position is in a part of the Zodiac that occurs earlier than the planet in the inferior position. So you kind of think of it as like something happening before. Maybe that sort of sets the template for the relationship and the planet in inferior position might be responding to it or, or picking up what was maybe dictated or laid down by the other planet. So think about it in terms of like, if you have like a difficult planet in the superior position, like might be creating a problem, or an issue of some kind that the planet in the inferior position has to deal with later on, while you reverse it and say have like Jupiter, in the superior aspect with Mars, it's like creating circumstances that maybe cushion Mars or you know, when you encounter the difficult Mars thing, maybe you have like the wisdom of Jupiter, to sort of moderate the situation a little better navigate it in a wiser way.

Tristan Paylor 1:40:49

That's sort of like what situation did your predecessor leave for you to deal with? Yeah.

Ada Pembroke 1:40:57

I really liked the way that you were talking about time. Because the whole spatial metaphor of you know, this one is on the right side of the chart, there's, there's something about the way my brain works, that that doesn't really make sense to me. So I really struggled with, with overcoming aspects for a long time. And what finally made it click for me was two things. One, was seeing it in terms of a chase, which is like a game of tag, this is a concept that I got from nightlight astrology, the planet that is chasing the other planet is the one that is overcoming. So like, you know, if you've got two, two kids playing a game of tag, the one coming up along behind is the chaser and the one who's running away is the one that's in front. So it's important if you're going to use that metaphor to remember that the Zodiac is a circle, of course, which is one of the reasons why working with circular charts instead of just lists of planetary positions is important. But I find that that that metaphor works better with with my brain, this is a slightly more violent example, because we're talking about about weapons instead of instead of children playing a game of tag, but if you have two planets that are, you've got one behind and one in front, the one behind is going to be able to shoot the planet in front in the back, which the planet in front is going to have to like twist around to shoot at the one behind if it's going to be shooting. So if you think in terms of like a car chase, the the car that is in the back is going to have a much easier time. You know, shooting the one in front than the one in the

Kyle Pierce 1:42:46

back. That was totally the next thing I was gonna say, because that's literally what I like to think about as a car chase. And, you know, when you're being chased, you're in the maybe the inferior position, and kind of a difficult situation where, you know, you have to drive and you'd have to turn all the way around and take a shot, you know, the one in front of you, you know, they can drive and shoot, so they have the advantage.

Tristan Paylor 1:43:08

That's a really, really good illustration. Thank you ADA.

Kyle Pierce 1:43:11

Yeah, but you also get a term that comes up a lot in traditional astrology is the idea of a hurling array, the aspect is within three degrees. On either side, separating or applying, I've heard, some will say just just applying, but give it a three degree orb, if it's within that range, the planet that's an inferior position is said to be able to hurl a ray back at the other planet. And I like to think about it, it's like yeah, taking turning around and taking a shot and actually, you know, maybe being able to hit them sometimes, you know,

Tristan Paylor 1:43:42

you can really kind of get them in your crosshairs because if a planet I mean the whole aspects are based on the idea of being able to see. So if an aspect is really close, it means that planet is just sort of in the center of your vision. It's gonna have Mars and Saturn are squaring each other and it's within one degree. And Mars is in the inferior position Mars can turn around and just get Saturn bright in his crosshairs. So he's at least got like, good aim. In that scenario, he's got a good visual on Saturn, whereas if the orb is really wide, Mars is not only having to turn around to shoot but kind of shooting in the dark because Saturn might be like in his peripheral vision or whatever.

Kyle Pierce 1:44:20

Yeah, like just not Yeah, like an awkward angle or, or something. I the other metaphor I like to think about too, is, especially because you get a lot of the phrasing, like in traditional texts about the planet superior position, looking down upon the other planet. And so I like to think about it in terms of like, you know, in a battlefield, right, you want to have the high ground. Having the high ground gives you the advantage, it gives you, you know, the ability to shoot down, you get to you get a better perspective, and then your opponent also has to climb up to get you now, I kind of like this one better sometimes too because you In certain situations, that's not always doesn't mean you're going to win the battle. Right? You might have the superior position. But you know, if your army sucks, or the other one is just really clever, you know, they might still be able to beat you. Or if they outnumber you, too, they might be able to turn the tables on you a little more.

Tristan Paylor 1:45:21

Yeah, I think it's important to include that bit of nuance as well, that having the high ground or, you know, being the one with the Head Start doesn't necessarily mean that everything always goes your way.

Ada Pembroke 1:45:37

Well, I was just thinking about maybe moving this a little bit more practical. Yeah, it's important to understand that the technical but but why do you use this why, why is this important. And this is a this is something that I feel pretty strongly about. Because, you know, as someone with a background in modern astrology, this is very much a traditional technique. And techniques like this are one of the reasons why I started incorporating traditional techniques into my practice, because this, this idea of overcoming is something that I think that you really need. And it is not something that was remembered until the Hellenistic revival in the 90s. So the reason that this is so important is because when you're combining planets by aspect, that the aspects are not all created equal. In modern astrology, you you'd be inclined to say, you know, if Mars and Venus are aspecting you know, Mars is making Venus more warlike and Venus is making Mars more peaceful. But with the overcoming doctrine, it's, it's not the way it works, you have one planet that is influencing the other one, if Venus is overcoming then Venus is making Mars more peaceful. And if Mars is overcoming, then Mars is making Venus more warlike. And so you take the situation that, you know, normally modern astrology is infamous for being for simplifying everything. But this is actually one of those situations where learning the technique makes things more simple, because you're not trying to combine two different planetary significations, you are looking at how a planet influences the behavior of another planet. And then so one way interaction, which, you know, we can be a little bit uncomfortable with, because there's language around, you know, domination, and, you know, the metaphors that that we use to that weren't spatial where we're pretty violent. And, you know, we can be pretty uncomfortable with that. But if we think about the planets as symbols, and not so much as people, I think that it, it makes the, the metaphor, a bit easier to understand and less uncomfortable.

Kyle Pierce 1:48:01

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that was a perfect way of, of describing that relationship, to gave just one caveat that I always try to think about too, which makes it more complicated a little bit. But it's even a relationship in which one, say, if it's two people, one person has the upper hand is in a position of authority, there is still back and forth in that relationship, even, you know, or just the fact that the relationship exists, is going to have an influence on the planet that's in the superior position, you know, say you have a boss, right? Who you know, tells you what to do, and has, you know, kind of a final say on stuff, you're still in a position to have an influence on your boss, just by nature of the work you do. Or depending on your boss, you know, there might be a more of a give and take. Or you might be able to suggest things that the boss may or may not agree to, but you know, your ideas can still have influence even on people who are your superiors.

Tristan Paylor 1:49:15

You can have different kinds of bosses, right? Do you have a boss who's really who's whose leadership style is more about collaboration and cooperation, or do you have a boss whose leadership style is more about my way or the highway? Yeah.

Ada Pembroke 1:49:29

Sorry. By the same token, you can have employees that are more or less inclined to cooperate.

Tristan Paylor 1:49:35

That's very true.

Kyle Pierce 1:49:36

Absolutely. Some employees can be especially obstinate what Megan used to term, precision mediocrity. Just doing exactly, exactly the amount of work that you need to do to not get fired. You still can have that power and you can make things a pain in the ass for your boss to

Ada Pembroke 1:49:57

or passive aggression or just not sure Ah, you can't fire the planets in your birth chart. so if they just decide that they're gonna rage quit, like,

Kyle Pierce 1:50:06

Yeah, I think that's a thing to consider just with all the aspects, you're gonna get more of that domineering relationship with maybe like a square, I would say, one being in a superior position. But I guess in practice, also, I find that, yeah, give it like a 6040, maybe sort of ratio, like, it gets a little bit of juice, but if one is, you know, has other things going for it, it might be in a stronger position to, to ignore the planet, the spirits position, or to turn the tables a little bit.

Ada Pembroke 1:50:39

I like to think about it in terms of colors. Like, in the case of the square, you know, it's, it's a bit more of an aggressive combination, you might have, like, purple and orange. Whereas, like, if you're dealing with trines, and sextiles, you you have a situation where, like, the, the planet in the superior position might be applying some like, nice shading. So like, if you have Saturn in a Trine, it might be applying a subtle dark shade of discipline to your blue. Whereas if it's in a square, it might be a more aggressive, like, you know, I have this image of a preschooler with a cran that's like really like grinding the Qur'an into the, into the paper, just trying to like, cover up that that shade, like maybe not, not quite so. So aggressive, but there's more force required because with trines and sextiles, there's kind of a, a natural complementary nests, you're you're adding like maybe black or white to like lighten or darken a shade. Whereas with the square, it's like, you know, you you can combine Purple and orange, but it might not. It might not be particularly pleasant.

Kyle Pierce 1:52:14

Oh, ya know, when I used to draw, I like that analogy a lot. Actually. I, I really liked contrast a lot. I actually used a lot of chalk and charcoal to create really like dynamic contrasts like make things pop. And I think that's a good way of sort of thinking about it. There's, there is a confrontation usually involved with a square, and a reconciliation that you're maybe an ongoing process of trying to create or having to recreate over and over again,

Ada Pembroke 1:52:44

I love that.

Kyle Pierce 1:52:46

Well, with that, do we want to maybe dig into our examples a little bit?

Tristan Paylor 1:52:52

Let's do it. Who's going

Kyle Pierce 1:52:54

first zone one burst,

Tristan Paylor 1:52:57

or one of the ADA to go earlier this time?

Ada Pembroke 1:53:00

Oh, that's right. I am bringing in Nicole Kidman to the party. Nice. So I'm everybody's favorite. You know, bringing Nicole Kidman party. In all seriousness, her birth data is June 20 1967 3:15pm. Honolulu, Hawaii. I was doing research for her. I had no idea she was born in Hawaii like she does. She doesn't seem like I don't know when over there. Like she would do. Very Ah,

Tristan Paylor 1:53:33

she wasn't there for very long before the family moved to Australia. Right. Like she grew up in Australia.

Ada Pembroke 1:53:40

But she, I mean, there's plenty of sun in Australia too. But she was in Hawaii long enough to get a Hawaiian name which I think is so cool. Yeah, right. I looked it up. I forget what it was. But I'm kind of having I chose this chair because I'm kind of having a Nicole Kidman moment. I saw her in the northmen and I thought that that movie was absolutely fantastic and her Oh, you have to watch it it's so good. I mean with your with your thing with Warren everything is

Kyle Pierce 1:54:14

Vikings are awesome. Yeah.

Ada Pembroke 1:54:16

Oh yeah. The Vikings are excellent on screen if they are you know, charging up your beach. Maybe you might have second thoughts.

Kyle Pierce 1:54:27

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ada Pembroke 1:54:31

So she was fantastic in that and I just started watching nine Perfect Strangers last night and her. She She plays this Russian wellness expert who runs a day spa, which is like our not a day spa like a retreat center, which is not our role that I would have expected her to be in and I was kind of like, you know, wondering if it was going to work but I'm only one episode. And she is just so, so amazing at playing this woman who is incredibly emotionally sensitive, but also there's a violence in her that is like held in check. And when I looked at her birth chart, I was like, Oh, we have to talk about her with squares, because there are so so many interesting squares. In my Astro gold, I have the orb set pretty tight, and she still has five squares in her chart. So

Kyle Pierce 1:55:40

there's a green Mars.

Ada Pembroke 1:55:42

So Mercury, Mars, squares between Jupiter and the north and south node. So that counts as two. And then there's a Pluto, Uranus conjunction and Virgo. And both of them are square the Moon in Sagittarius. So that brings us up to five.

Kyle Pierce 1:55:59

I'm really curious. Sorry, I want to cut you off. No, no, go ahead. I, I'm just I've never really had a solid method for interpreting aspects with nodes, you know, I've read like different takes on it. Like people sort of norm or, you know, depending on what tradition you're dealing with. So I'm curious if I don't want to distract you from maybe the squares you want to focus on. But I'd be curious what your thoughts are on, on all of it.

Ada Pembroke 1:56:24

So I'm gonna focus on on the other aspects, because I didn't know what your thoughts were about the nodes and, and so on. But I love squares to the notes. They are like one of my favorite things. And I have Jupiter square the nodes in my own chart. So I interpret the nodes through an evolutionary lens. Still, even though I've studied the way that traditional astrologers view the nodes, and I've, I've done some study on how the nodes are treated in Vedic Astrology. And I love using the story of Rahu and Ketu. Because I do think that they really bring out an aspect of the nodes that you don't get with evolutionary astrology. But I still primarily interpret the nodes in terms of the way that evolutionary astrologers do. And the reason for that is that I have the Sun conjunct the North Node and I have Saturn conjunct the south node. And in Vedic Astrology and Hellenistic astrology, that means that my son should be incredibly powerful, and my Saturn should be especially weak. And I have seen over and over and over again in my life, just how much Saturn dominates my son. And I have all kinds of patterns that have been with me my entire life of kind of control, freakness and hyper discipline, when it's not necessary, taking responsibility for things that aren't my responsibility in a way that absolutely dominates my ability to express myself and attend to my own ego needs. So I definitely do not have a weak Saturn in my chart by any stretch of the imagination and shining. It has been very difficult for me.

Kyle Pierce 1:58:19

You seem very sunny and shiny to me.

Ada Pembroke 1:58:21

Even Yeah, I mean, I have the sun is my chart ruler, I have Leo rising, I have it in the 10th house. But it is actually a really, really big deal for me to be on a podcast. I have been doing interviews of other people putting other people in the spotlight for years and years and years. But being on a podcast, myself shining, investing as much energy as I do on social media, doing things like Instagram lives, these things like, I recognize that when I actually do them, I look like I'm Yeah, I don't want to sound egotistical, but I find myself doing them and it feels like second nature. But getting myself to the place where I would actually put myself in the position of discovering that they were second nature was really, really hard for me. And for a long time. I really prefer to keep myself in the background, promote other people support other people. And there is a side of Leo, that is definitely liked. I think that's one of the things about Leo, that people really underestimate. But I'm getting getting away ahead of myself, trying to establish my relationship with the notes. And why I think the way I do so, in evolutionary astrology squares to the nodes, for those of you who aren't familiar evolutionary astrology is really grounded in the idea of past lives. And you don't need to believe in past lives. In order to use this model you can every time an evolutionary astrologer says past lives. If you don't like that idea, you can substitute Early childhood, and the rules absolutely apply. So the the planets that are square the nodes in the story of evolutionary astrology are things that you needed to do challenges that you faced, either in a past life or when you were a child that are unresolved, you you didn't face the challenge you ran away, you were in a situation where you were not able to face that challenge for some reason or another. And it's kind of like in a ghost story where the ghost needs to have something resolved before they can move on. In order for you to engage in serious spiritual growth in your lifetime. You need to address the unresolved business that you have with any planet square the notes. And in Nicole Kidman, this case, she has the nodes in the first house in the seventh house, which means that she is fundamentally dealing as far as the nodes are concerned with questions regarding identity and her relationship with others. And she has Jupiter in the 10th house score both of the nodes rather closely conjunct the midheaven, it's about two degrees. And that means that for her, she is in a situation where she has a history of prioritizing her own needs over the needs of her relationships, because that's that South Node is in the first house. And she's moving into a situation where she needs to start prioritizing the needs of her intimate relationships over the needs of herself. However, she has a skip step in the 10th house, which is the need for career success. And so you can see in her in her career history, she had a relationship with Tom Cruise that was one of her more successful relationships until her most recent relationship and her way of kind of resolving that tension between herself. Her intimate relationship and her career was having a very high profile relationship with a fellow actor, and kind of combining all three of those things into one situation. The relationship eventually broke up because they said that their careers were putting them into conflict. And

she was in a situation where she really had to choose between her career and his career, her career or her relationship. And she decided to end the relationship and in a sense that the decision to end that relationship was the decision to choose the the success of her career over her individual needs, or her relationship needs. And it's almost like you can see in her biography that doing that allowed her to pave the way for a relationship that was much more stable and a relationship in which she, you know, she has been with the person that she's been with for, I think 10 years now they have kids together, you can, you can almost see her starting to move in into that stability of a partner relationship that you would expect for somebody who is trying for the North Node in the seventh house in Taurus. So it's almost like she, she had to face that test with Tom Cruise, where she had to make a choice. And even though her career, as far as her nodal story is concerned, is not the final answer. She had to go through that Threshold Guardian experience where she did choose her career over herself in her relationships in order for her to be able to move on from that question. A simpler way of putting it maybe is that in order for her to have the kinds of relationships that she wants, she needs to experience some career success so that she can kind of relax and be be satisfied and at peace in the kinds of relationships that she's she's gunning for so viewing planets as square the nodes as skip steps is the TLDR of how to read them in evolutionary astrology.

Kyle Pierce 2:04:35

That's really interesting. I love that but I remember a time where I was actually looking for maybe that exact bit of information. It's really cool. Today's sky shows up for Mr. Days yesterday sky by Stephen forests,

Ada Pembroke 2:04:49

is it is my go to book on the nodes. It's what I teach, and it's it has. I have done hundreds of past life readings just to Using what I learned from yesterday sky, and it's been, it's been amazing. It's one of my top three books to recommend for astrologers

Kyle Pierce 2:05:10

out there, check it out. It's fantastic. It's interesting too, because you can get like, I like, almost like the Vedic approach to the nodes is just because you can get you they end up being more like planets in the way that they have like multiple significations. They do different things. They have like more than one job, they can represent multiple things like you I also was kind of near about the mean, sort of the Hellenistic perspective on the nodes where it's just like South Node make smaller, make less, make more. And well, Nicole Kidman doesn't have to be an example of this. Your history ends up supporting my theory about the the nodes and punk rock because you were heavily involved in the in the punk scene, right?

Ada Pembroke 2:05:58

Yes, I was very heavily involved i in high school, I worked at punk club and was was a stage manager and water bottle seller. Yeah, it is the punk scene and Connecticut dominated my life as a teenager.

Kyle Pierce 2:06:13

I was going to show her to hear on astrology hotline. No.

Ada Pembroke 2:06:17

You have me convinced for sure.

Kyle Pierce 2:06:20

But I mean that that's one of many manifestations, maybe of the notes. And anyway, I don't want to detract you from Nicole Kidman.

Tristan Paylor 2:06:28

Now, there's some juicy squares in this chart. I know I feel like Erina I feel like on the islands

Kyle Pierce 2:06:33

derailed you from gordonii talk about? Were you going to talk about the notes or no?

Ada Pembroke 2:06:39

I did really want to talk about the notes. Okay, good. All right, seriously, but like,

Tristan Paylor 2:06:43

I mean, it's still relevant because I think it is kind of a common question. Oh, yeah. Do you want it to double to the nodes mean anything because they're not planets. So I think we'll also like get into aspects to angles and stuff when we're wrapping it up. So yeah, squares, the nodes. And the square section, I think is a relevant subject. And that's a really good method of interpreting them. So thank you for that Ada.

Ada Pembroke 2:07:07

Thank you. So I just wanted to spend a few minutes talking about this really interesting aspect that she has between Mercury in cancer at 20 degrees and Mars and Libra at 18 degrees and Mercury's in the ninth hole sign house, and Mars is in the 12th hole sign house. So I want to start by talking about that, that Mars, she Mars and Libra in the 12th house sounds like a recipe for an absolute disaster. Mars in Libra is like a has the tendency to be like a bull in a china shop, which is why Mars is in detriment in that sign. You've got like, you know the word planet enclosed in this very small space. And then Mars is in the 12th house. And one of the issues that 12th House planets tend to run into is that the 12th house is the area of the sky that everybody else can see about you. But you have a very difficult time seeing about yourself. So Mars, in Libra in the 10th house, or a 12th house has the tendency to indicate a person who has a really hard time not starting stuff by accident. And because that 12th House planet tends to be outside of conscious awareness. It creates a situation where the person is starting arguments or acting like a bull in a china shop and just acting generally with complete on self awareness. And that is not who Nicole Kidman is at all. She is an incredible actress incredibly self aware. And I think that the reason why that Mars in Libra doesn't play out the way that it stereotypically would, is because she has the square between Mercury in cancer and Mars in Libra, which is really interesting because it is a separating square. It the square has already happened and it's resolving the it's two degrees away, but Mercury is still the overcoming planet. And so Mercury is in the ninth house very close to the top of the sky. Not far away from the midheaven at all. And Mercury is the planet of perception. And it's almost like Nicole Kidman has this planet way up at the top of the sky with like, a lot of perspective and the ability to see very clearly. And that is keeping an eye on that Mars in Libra and doing so with that Cancerian ability to understand the emotional impact of things that emotional sensitivity that is kind of watching over that Mars in Libra and kind of kind of checking it and making sure that that Mars in Libra is not able to have misbehaved by accident. And there's this really interesting quality to Nicole Kidman acting it. It's not that she's a good actress because she convinces you that she is seamlessly in the role she's able to get into her characters. Absolutely. And she's able to portray many different kinds of people. But she's off always fundamentally Nicole Kidman and she gives you this impression of making you aware of the fact that she's wearing a mask, making you aware of the fact that she is always herself playing someone else, while also being utterly in control of the way that she presents herself. And I think that that is the the Mars in Libra being held in check being held under control.

Kyle Pierce 2:10:49

Yeah, no, that's, that's really interesting. I'm just like, looking at her chart again here. And I sort of, especially like when there's like maybe a combination of a square and a sextile or square in a trine to a planet. Because it's like, especially maybe Nicole Kidman has. Mars is ruling her ascendant, from the 12th house. Most the time I find out that works out a lot better than then maybe traditional texts would assume. But actually seems to be good for actors, because there is that sort of forgetting oneself that can maybe happen when you have the ruler of the first in the 12. But it also has that sextile with Venus in the 10th house and Leo, sort of pulling Mars out of the 12. But then, like you said, Mercury is in that superior square with Mars, like sort of keeping Mars in check a little bit. You just think like Mars and cancer two, or, excuse me, mercury in cancer, it does have like a more a softer approach to communication and a more sort of conscientious way of speaking that, you know, maybe Mars and Libra. I often think of the movie mean girls a little bit. You know, it's a bit of a stereotype. But it's like, there is some sometimes you get a little bit of that quality, that sort of like backhanded underhanded way of insulting someone, which ours can do. But like with mercury, sort of aggressive, passive aggressive. Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of ways that can manifest and it's like, not all to Mars, and Libra is going to do but then having mercury in cancer, it's sort of like a little more sort of demanding that Mars do things in a way that is a little more approachable, a little more good at performing in a way that is pleasing. But like maybe, I don't know, I wonder if it costs a little bit like maybe she has to blow off steam elsewhere. That's getting more into the chart in general are supposed to be talking about the square. I actually have a couple Mercury Mars squares in my example. And I actually personally have a Mars Mercury square, Mars, superior side. But what it seems to consistently describe, especially when Mars is overcoming is just about foul language, just like a tendency towards profanity, which I definitely have. I swear too much in my life. And I do try to regulate that a little bit. But I don't know I have not. I don't know a ton about Nicole Kidman, I guess. Does she know she's Australian? Right? Yeah, it was just born in Hartford.

Ada Pembroke 2:13:36

And she was born in Honolulu. But she grew up in Australia. That

Kyle Pierce 2:13:40

will Australians always they're always swearing, right?

Ada Pembroke 2:13:45

Yes, the entire country.

Kyle Pierce 2:13:47

But then when you get like mercury in the it's like you can sort of turn it on or turn it off. A little more mercury kind of has the upper hand as opposed to it being like impulsive, or just habitual?

Tristan Paylor 2:13:58

Do we know I also know very little about Nicole Kidman. Do we know much about her take on spirituality? Is she religious or spiritual at all? Has she spoken at all about that kind of stuff? Because the fact that mercury is, you know, a God of prophecy and is in the ninth house which has to do with spirituality. I feel like we've talked a bit about the relationship between the ninth and the 12th house before where the ninth house is kind of like the solution to the 12th house, you know, the excesses of the 12th house can be mediated or moderated by the ninth house and the ninth house can bring out the best qualities of the 12th to sort of transform them, or you know, like the 12th is isolation, which generally we don't like but the ninth house is spirituality. And so it becomes like making use of solitude for the sake of spiritual contemplation or study or seeking enlightenment or whatever the case may be whatever sort of path you're on. on Z. I wonder if there's anything like that in her life that we know about that might further illustrate that square.

Kyle Pierce 2:15:08

I'm immediately thinking about and I actually don't know her a little bit more about like Katie Holmes says, marriage with Tom Cruise. But Nicole Kidman was married to Tom Cruise and there was, you know, the whole Scientology. Now when they have the relationship and I believe I'm actually looking it up right now that she just really, I'm reading from Wikipedia here she attended Mary law, criticism by Catholic leaders regarding her role in The Golden Compass is anti okay, I misread. She's not anti Catholic, but the Catholic Church did not like her role in The Golden Compass.

Tristan Paylor 2:15:47

Right The Golden Compass critical of Christianity.

Kyle Pierce 2:15:51

That's interesting. That's like a ninth house figure. Saying I don't like that.

Tristan Paylor 2:15:58

Um, she does have overcoming squares. There is a T square in her chart with Mars, Saturn and mercury. So Mercury is overcoming Mars, but Santa. Yeah, the Aries is overcoming mercury in the ninth house. And I've read it's Mala fix in the third are knights specifically that represent blasphemy, but I wonder if mafex squaring the third or ninth house could also be a little bit of like being critical of mainstream religion. Oh, I

Kyle Pierce 2:16:26

have a good example. But yeah, well, actually, it looks like so she told Entertainment Weekly that the Catholic Church is part of her essence and that her religious beliefs would prevent her from taking a role in a film she perceived as anti Catholic. Since her divorce from Tom Cruise, she has been reluctant to discuss Scientology. So we don't actually I don't actually know. But she's a big supporter of women's rights support international Violence Against Women Act. She testified before the United Oh, that's really interesting. She testified before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs to support the international Violence Against Women Act. Seems like very Marcin and Libra, I actually

Tristan Paylor 2:17:07

like that does Yeah. This seems very Mars in Libra. And being a spokesperson, you can see the ship going both ways. They're a little bit I feel like Mars and Libra works best when there is a social justice cause they can get behind. Mars needs something to do. And I think maybe, you know, one of the potential struggles for Mars in Libra is finding something to do and Venus's house. Hmm. And that is a thing you can do. And Venus knows this. You can you know, fight for justice. Advocate, especially if you're doing so, you know, through political action or through, like you said, advocacy or through your words, you know, being an Air sign. So then you've got that connection with mercury via square. Yeah. So that Mars can kind of get out of the 12th house and get up on the public stage in front of political representatives and say she couldn't say her piece.

Kyle Pierce 2:18:01

Yeah. That is interesting. So to that, like she actually sense that she won't take roles that are kind of anti Catholic, for Mercury's for overcoming Mars, sort of saying no to to Mars doing something that mercury in the ninth house doesn't like,

Tristan Paylor 2:18:21

and mercury, especially like in the sign like cancer, which tends to be connected to tradition, and to what you were brought up. She was brought up Catholic. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like she's pretty private about her spiritual beliefs, which I respect. That's, that's a tough one. When you're a celebrity. I think that's what's sacred, right? Like, your spiritual beliefs are sacred to you. And sacred means set apart. So not wanting to have the public sort of, you know, giving their opinions about it. I totally get. Absolutely, but that she does have. She's definitely on a spiritual path of some kind. And it's important enough to her that she's willing to take that into consideration when she's choosing roles. It's interesting that she decided to ninth house thing. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.

Ada Pembroke 2:19:14

I'm sorry. It's interesting that she decided to do that after the Golden Compass. I mean, that's, that was a really high profile movie. And it was a the church tends to criticize things that are more high profile than things that are that are not as high profile. If you're involved in something that is not, you know, as big as the Golden Compass. You know, you can kind of fly under the radar. And the film that she was in the others is also profoundly anti Catholic. And so it's interesting that she she made that decision after the Golden Compass. It's almost like, you know, it kind of raises a question for me, was this a subversive way of doing Elaine with her own issues from her Catholic upbringing. And it was kind of happening behind her back like that Mars in Libra was kind of, you know, finding a way to work out her anger and frustration in a way that she didn't realize, or was it more of that being dragged into the public eye that the 12th House planets don't necessarily like in that particular instance, informing her decisions?

Tristan Paylor 2:20:26

That's almost like mercury is saying, Keep this sacred. Like, this is one thing we can keep in the 12th. House. Yeah, it's out of public view. This is for you alone. And for the people you're closest to. It's not for the world to see. And it is I mean, it's a square. So there's tension.

Kyle Pierce 2:20:44

Oh, yeah. When you see that there's negotiation sort of going on maybe her and mercury in the sense, Mars can still maybe take on the roles that it wants to learn.

Ada Pembroke 2:20:57

And Saturn in Aries to it's almost like, it looks to me, looking at this chart, like Mars and Saturn are two sides of the teeter totter. And Mercury is kind of mediating between them. Yeah. Saturn has a thing with conservativism. And institutions. I mean, if they're, if there's a more saturnine institution than the Catholic Church, I, I can't think of one off the top of my head. I mean, yeah, also, there's this secret anger. And it's like mercury is like, okay, so which of these things are we going to be communicating? How am I going to mediate between these two aspects of the experience or character, or just

Tristan Paylor 2:21:36

the T square is a good example of how much nuance and complexity and contradiction there is, within a single person that you've kind of got all of these different aspects of yourself that are sort of pulling you in different directions, which is, I think one of the things that happens with opposition's and squares because they're tense, it makes you feel like you're being pulled in different directions. And when you have something like a T square, or Grand Cross, where there are a bunch of planets, all part of like a mass of heart aspects with each other, it can feel like you're being pulled in all kinds of different directions all at once. And it's kind of helpful to have all planets Mercury and cancer at the apex of that T square, because mercury is the mediator and cancer is good at smoothing things over. So that's helpful. For sure. Yeah, it hasn't been like, I feel like there hasn't been any sort of, at least as far as I know, huge controversy around religion with Nicole Kidman. And not being in the Golden Compass was controversial, I guess, being raised Catholic, but nothing compared to like, I don't know, there have been some pretty huge controversies around people's religious practices. And that seems like kind of small time relative to religious controversies that happen in celebrity land.

Ada Pembroke 2:23:01

It makes me wonder how much of that is smoothed over by, by that Venus, in soft aspect with both Mars and Saturn, right, to go back into the whole chart? Again? I

Unknown Speaker 2:23:10

mean, it's, it's, well,

Ada Pembroke 2:23:13

it's very tempting

Kyle Pierce 2:23:14

to, I mean, I think it's okay to do that a little bit for us. Because I think the idea is to get a sense of how to interpret, you know, one aspect is not going to tell you the story, necessarily, it's gonna like the chart will tell you the story. But it's sort of interesting how, maybe just for that T square, but like, there is the Caulkins involved pretty heavily in both the Democratic Party and charity work, particularly focused towards like domestic violence, and family, domestic violence prevention. So actually a bunch of charity she's involved with, but also being involved heavily with the Democratic party that has to kind of cut that must come at some degree with her, trying not to, like, piss off the Catholic Church or try to do so in a way that, you know, is respectful to her identification with the Catholic Church. She said, It's like part of her essence, like she doesn't want to work against the Catholic Church. But she obviously supports things that are groups that are maybe advocating for things that are not things that the Catholic Church would be terribly in favor of not saying the Catholic Church is pro domestic violence, but it's like she's sort of she's sort of doing things that are both in line with like areas that she cares about, without necessarily like stepping on the toes of the Catholic Church as much as possible. But that's

Ada Pembroke 2:24:44

the Democratic Party. Yeah, the Democratic Party is the the party of is the pro choice party. And she's not directly working on those sorts of things that would get her in trouble with the the Catholic church she is not Nancy Paul. Let's see who isn't able to take communion at the moment because she's working for abortion rights.

Kyle Pierce 2:25:04

But she's worked directly with Pelosi on multiple things, too, which is, you know, it's just interesting. Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off.

Ada Pembroke 2:25:12

No, no, it's fine. I haven't heard of you off the entire time. So she's able to work with this organization that in certain ways, the Catholic church might see it as, quote, unquote, the enemy, but because she's not working directly on issues that the Catholic Church stands against, it's like she's putting herself in a position where, you know, if the Catholic church gets church gets mad at her for working with the domestic violence, she's in a position where she can say, Oh, so you're in favor of a violence of people getting beaten up? That's, that's not appropriate. It's like, there's, there's a cleverness to, to the mediation, right. It's like you can see Mercury's trickery involved. She's involved in exactly the kinds of things that if she was called out for it, it would make the person who was calling her out look really bad. Yeah.

Kyle Pierce 2:26:12

Well, I think T squares, maybe in general or discard aspects, it's like they require a lot of sort of careful navigation, like to find ways of appeasing maybe both topics or the you know, what the both planets are speaking to, finding a way to, to operate within that tension. But that must be a source of tension, like imagine for her internally hurt, like for as experienced as trying to find a way to, to reconcile maybe these two sort of clashing directions or desires.

Ada Pembroke 2:26:48

It's a really interesting T square because of the involvement of Saturn and the fact that T squares have the tendency to be like a three legged chair, you're constantly in a balancing act, trying to keep yourself from falling over. And in this case, the missing leg is Capricorn. But Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn is involved. And so it almost looks to me like it might be a kinder T square, because there's this constant wanting to lean into that Capricorn, which is missing, which is going to tap on you over. But it's almost like Saturn is like, no, no, no, it's fine. I've got this. I mean, sort of except for the fact that Saturn is a detriment over there. So it's like,

Kyle Pierce 2:27:32

it's in the sixth than Yeah, it's a tough one. But I think it helps it there's reception, which is maybe one one of the things that I always look at for aspects generally. You mentioned, I think a bit before, but the fact that Mars and Mars is in the sign of Saturn's exaltation, and Libra, and Saturn is in Mars is domicile on Aries. So it actually, while that's a difficult aspect, generally, the reception helps make it a little more manageable.

Ada Pembroke 2:28:02

It's like the chart of mitigating factors. This would be difficult to accept.

Kyle Pierce 2:28:07

Yeah. Well, and it's still, it's difficult, but it doesn't mean that it's useless or that it doesn't have ways of working. Oh, no charges useless. I mean, she, I would say put, it's one of the 12 House six house sort of topics that seems to come up a lot. It's like charity work and doing things for others. Well, I know we've talked about probably a lot about Nicole.

Tristan Paylor 2:28:37

Renee apples. Yeah,

Kyle Pierce 2:28:38

I probably probably should.

Tristan Paylor 2:28:40

Did you want to bring up your examples, Kyle? Or do you want me to go first? Are you like, raring to go? I'm happy to go last

Kyle Pierce 2:28:48

aren't you go for it. Okay.

Tristan Paylor 2:28:51

So hang on. I'm going to send you I have two charts. Two examples. I just wanted to go over briefly. So my first example of the square is from one of my favorite greats in the history of psychology, BF Skinner. Burrous Frederick Skinner. Yeah. One of the most influential behaviorists. So much of what we know about learning, we can trace to this man we owe him a lot he is He is famous for those who are not super familiar with him. He is famous for his research into operant conditioning, which is a form of conditioning, where a an organism changes their behavior in order to get something from their environment or avoid something in their environment. So he was famous for making what were nicknamed Skinner boxes or operant conditioning boxes where you know, he put in a rat or A pigeon and a lever and you know, train them to push the lever for rewards or what have you. He has taught pigeons how to play ping pong. I believe he might have been. So pigeons are really smart, he loved pigeons. And he was able to teach them all kinds of things. He actually worked on a project to build a pigeon guided missile. It didn't it so it had a very successful test run. But at the end of the day, his take was that no one took the projects seriously enough to actually make it happen for real, like actually build them for the army. But the test run was successful, he trained pigeons to peck on a screen where the target would be, and so the pigeons would be able to launch missiles. That's so awesome. Yeah, he's, he's incredible. And the square in his chart that I find really interesting that I wanted to look at, in particular, is his Moon in Taurus in the fifth house. So as I guess I'll just briefly go over his chart. He was born on March 20 1904. And he was born while Capricorn was rising, with Saturn and Aquarius in the second house, which is part of this square and the Moon in Taurus in the fifth house. There's about 13 degrees or so between them, the moon is applying to Saturn, the moon moves very quickly. So you, I mean, there we as we discussed at the beginning of this, of the aspects series, there are all kinds of approaches to orbs, but I personally use the traditional system, which is that you can use a very large or for the moon, and it is still a close aspect, because the moon covers almost 13 degrees of the Zodiac in a single day.

Kyle Pierce 2:31:58

That's how far I think Mars, the Moon is from the square to

Tristan Paylor 2:32:02

Yeah, it's like so it's, it's still Moon wise, it's still pretty close square. And the reason I found this particular square really interesting is that both the moon and Saturn are planets that have a lot to do with fate. The moon was considered the planet of fortune, and Hellenistic astrology. And fortune in that context, doesn't mean luck, necessarily, that's part of it. It's it's really more about your fate, and particularly your material fate. You know what your environment determines about your life, and behaviorism, which is the school of psychology that BF Skinner was a proponent of, it came along during a point in psychology, where psychology was really attempting to be a science. But because it was studying things like emotion and cognition, and like internal states of mind, and emotion, it was really hard to like quantify, to actually like, make predictions. I mean, science is all about, a theory is only as good as it can make accurate predictions. And so psychology was kind of struggling to make actual predictions about human behavior. And behaviorism comes along and tries to really focus only on what we can observe about people, we can't observe somebody's interstates, but we can observe their behavior, we can test their behavior, we can record their behavior. And so we have quantifiable data. And we can use that to formulate theories to actually make predictions. So in the case of behaviorism, everything is sort of determined by your environment, your patterns of behavior are determined by stimuli in your environment that influence those patterns of behavior. You know, you, you learn that if you do a certain thing, you get rewarded, or you are punished. And so that changes the way you behave in the world. And that is, that kind of stuff is actually really easy to study in a scientific context. So just like the moon having so much to do with the sort of material determinants of your life, the fact that he's got this exalted moon, in a square with Saturn being really significant in his chart, I thought was very interesting. He believed that free will was an illusion, he was a radical behaviorist and to him, you, you don't actually have agency, all of your choices, everything you do is determined by the influence of your environment, which is very like going hard on the idea of fate in this sense, it's a scientific. It's not a philosophical or spiritual sense of fate. It's a scientific sense of fate that if you were exposed to certain things in your environment, you're going to behave a certain way as a result and that's just the way it is and you don't really get a choice in the matter. And that is, you know, one way of defining fate and defining the moon in astrology where, you know, the moon has to do with things like the circumstances of where you were born and who your parents were. And, you know, how much nutrition did you get when you were growing up? And how much sunlight was there? Did you grow up in the Far North? Do you grow close to the equator, like these are all things that you have zero control over, that influenced the course of the rest of your life.

And then, of course, you have, you know, Saturn being involved in this square, which also has a lot to do with fate, as well as skepticism and doubt. So, you know, believing free will is an illusion. And being Saturn is, you know, one of the planets that is connected to science, because being a scientist is all about prioritizing critical thinking and skepticism, and always doubting and always being humble, which are all Saturnian traits, you know, to be true scientist, you have to be prepared to be proven wrong again, and again and again. And if you know a theory comes along, that makes better predictions than the theory that you've been using, you have to be willing to let it go, you always have to be willing to question whatever you see. So that he was just like such an eminent scientist, and very much and have embodied that spirit of skepticism and critical thinking. It feels really fitting with with that aspect. And then on a more personal level, there is a really fun project that folks undertook recently, to get some sense of BF Skinner's personality, there is probably the most scientific and most useful way of assessing personality in psychology is what is called the Big Five inventory. So there are five spectrums of personality traits, and you can land somewhere on those five spectrums. And these traits remain consistent pretty much from birth to death, and can actually predict things like how likely you are to get divorced, how long you will live, like it's wild, how how good these traits actually are predicting things in your life. So a bunch of people got together and went through a bunch of BF Skinner's, like journals and letters and stuff like that, and decided to try and do a big five analysis based on what they read. So I mean, it's not a perfectly objective method, but nonetheless really interesting. And what they concluded by, you know, going through all of his writings and you know, personal writing and stuff like that, was that he scores very high on conscientiousness, on the big five. And that also feels very, like moon in an earth sign square to a dignified Saturn conscientiousness is the personality trait of being highly organized, very reliable, very on the ball. Very structured, very scheduled, not spontaneous, like systematic, it's common personality trait for scientists. And it's actually quote, BF Skinner himself, he he is said that relaxation is dangerous. He was a bit of a workaholic, he was very invested in his work. And so I think you can, you can kind of see the tension between the moon and Saturn there, where the moon is, you know, generally where we go to relax and Saturn is work. So yeah, that's, that's my take on on this square, I'd love to hear what you think about the square in his chart. It's great.

Kyle Pierce 2:38:41

Such a good example. Really, even just like that, like relaxation is dangerous. And the moon is in Taurus, like in the fifth house, which is very much the house of just like, doing your thing, it's actually be think like a Moon in Taurus in the fifth house is very good at relaxing and having a good time. But like in a, like, a healthy sort of way, think of like, have a nice spread of healthy, productive, pleasurable activities to do in this free time. But then when Saturn sort of dominating it, it's kind of like nope, that's, that's dangerous. We need to, you know, need to keep this in check. But even just like the behavioral, like these literally trying to, like, categorize, behavior, study, even like building a box, where you create like a limited, you know, structure of action, right. It's why Saturn is so good. Saturn, because it's like controlling the conditions completely. And it's, it's like putting the moon in a box and just the moon will be a little more of like your, your instinctive sort of biological response reactions to things.

Tristan Paylor 2:39:52

Like a moon is like it is conditions like conditions is a good word for the moon, but whatever conditioning you're in, that's the moon And Saturn is in the overcoming position sort of placing those limits on those conditions.

Kyle Pierce 2:40:06

Yeah. But it's interesting though, too, which is, she doesn't relate to the square directly. But it's actually maybe a good way of thinking about when you're trying to interpret an aspect is that it's not saying no to everything. Saturn is not saying no to everything about the moon, it's not saying, you know, be super harsh and strict with the moon. It is saying that a bit, but like even his approach to teaching, he emphasized the need for positive reinforcement,

Tristan Paylor 2:40:32

teaching, and just punishment does not work well.

Kyle Pierce 2:40:36

And his third house, say quite a bit about teaching has Venus in pisces, and so as the Sun and Mercury in pisces, but the fifth house to you know, has a lot to do with like students, as well, like students and you know, who you mentor who you teach this approach to teaching. And it's has the Moon in Taurus in it ruled by exalted Venus. So it's like, maybe an otherwise very kind, I want to say it's the word I'm looking for permissive, maybe approach sort of being countered by Saturn in Aquarius. It's sort of like, really trying to find the right balance when it comes to teaching.

Tristan Paylor 2:41:15

It's, I mean, teaching was up he was and he was really like educational reform was really important to him. It's one of the things I really admire about him. Yeah. But like his approach to education was always based on the evidence, he wanted hard evidence for the techniques that were being used. He wanted things that worked, which is very Saturnian. And also, like, you know, moon and an earth sign wants things that give you practical results. But it, it was evidence that led him to conclude that punishment is a crappy form of teaching. It's a crappy form of raising kids and teaching students, that positive reinforcement actually works a lot better, because the evidence just shows that it does. So it's like, it seems very, like soft and kind hearted to say, it's better to teach people using positive reinforcement, but in this case, it doesn't necessarily come from a place of what feels good. It comes from this what the hard evidence says it's pragmatic.

Kyle Pierce 2:42:15

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But like, yeah, very systematized and structured. Yes, Saturn. Go ahead and say something.

Ada Pembroke 2:42:23

Well, something that I think is really interesting about this Saturn and Aquarius square the Moon in Taurus is I see this tension between the individual, the home and the family. It's not an obvious read of the Moon in Taurus and the fifth house, but the moon is a planet of of nurturing of parenting, the fifth house is the house of children. And so the moon has this family, individual relationship between the parent and the child thing going and something that I have been noticing a lot and we're recording this when Saturn is in Aquarius and something that I've been noticing as Saturn has been in Aquarius is an increased awareness and focus on wider systemic factors like systemic racism, and economic justice and things that are very big and systemic. And I don't know enough about BF Skinner to know if he was interested in these wider systemic things. But it it seems to me like it is a very short jump from the things that you have talked about already, to a understanding of maybe the environment that we were raised on is in is bigger than the small parent child relationship that we're we're raised with not that it isn't important, of course, so incredibly important, but the parent and the child are both operating within these wider systemic situations. And so you can see the Saturn and Aquarius, systemic, even economic with it being in the second house. Factors overwhelming the parent child relationship, even one that would be very good with the men being dignified and Taurus.

Kyle Pierce 2:44:21

Skinner actually wrote quite a bit on politics. He was very interested in like solving the bigger issues.

Tristan Paylor 2:44:31

Still, I think still existing a commune based off of his utopia is utopia. He had a whole social system, wrote a novel and in which you, you know, this whole social system is described and people actually attempted to form small society is based off of his work and there's I think, at least one that's still functioning.

Kyle Pierce 2:44:54

Yeah. Yeah, it's like he wanted to approach you know, the big solve the big issue. Have humanity literally wanted to prevent humanity from destroying itself? By creating a technology of human behavior, like, basically developing how to control the conditions of one's upbringing and life to create ideal behavior. Like, it's, it's nuts. It's crazy how clearly that is coming through. But you can see also like, maybe a risk of like taking it too far too. Yeah. Well, it obviously had a lot of positive byproducts. You know, it does sort of overall, like his sort of worldview can take on a bit of a darker tone in the sense that it's like, well, yeah, like, you're basically a slave to your, your behavior, your conditions, you know, which has like an element of truth. But there are maybe other psychologists who didn't like it, because it was a little too hard, maybe on that on that behavioral component.

Ada Pembroke 2:45:58

One of the potential expressions of Saturn and a sign that it rules is out of control, control control limits. ticularly. In

Kyle Pierce 2:46:05

a night chart, yeah.

Ada Pembroke 2:46:06

Oh, yeah. That's just

Tristan Paylor 2:46:13

for sure. And I think, I mean, I'm not an expert. But I think, you know, the, the consensus, probably largely in psychology now is that some of the conclusions that the behaviorists came to are just not true, like, we are not just, we can't be reduced just to our behaviors. And there are a lot of factors that contribute to how we behave other than just environmental conditions. There's, you know, heredity, obviously, which did behaviorists did take that into account, but you know, you don't want to downplay it and, you know, internal factors, cognition and emotion and stuff like that do also matter. And we're finding, you know, better ways of being able to study that area of psychology now. But yeah, it's I don't I don't think that like the sort of radical behaviorism that BF Skinner believed in would be sort of commonly believed by psychologists nowadays. But that kind of thinking did have a huge influence.

Kyle Pierce 2:47:11

Oh, yeah. Sometimes you need like, the extreme version of something to Yeah, sort of lay down a precedent for it, and then we can sort it out afterwards. Yeah. And find out what to use from it and what not to,

Ada Pembroke 2:47:22

I mean, it's, it's very scientific, isolating everything else, so that you can study one thing directly, it's like, he's he removed all of the other factors aside from behavior. And, you know, he had to believe that behavior was everything. It's like he, he had to create that focus in his mind and really, truly believe it in order to be creative, that I don't like to use the word objectivity, but create the necessary experimental conditions within his own mind to allow him to isolate this one particular variable.

Kyle Pierce 2:48:05

I do just want to read this quick. It's actually a summary from the Wikipedia article on him. But just in reference to his approach to you know, his utopia that he wanted to create was, what is the good life? The books answer, Walden to weave? What is the good life? The books answer is a life of friendship, health, art, a healthy balance between work and leisure, a minimum of unpleasantness, and a feeling that one has made worldwide contributions to a society in which resources are ensured, in part by minimizing consumption. It's like the moon and Taurus is still doing is describing it's like describing what the Moon in Taurus is all about, in a sense, but just with like that, like just thinking maybe by the end, it's like minimizing consumption, like keeping everything it's just like a really rigid maybe moving towards.

Tristan Paylor 2:49:00

It's, it's interesting, because it feels like Saturn and the moon are trying to resolve the tension. Very much like Saturn. Saturn's being kinda left is in the position of leadership is in the position of responsibility. And it's like, okay, the moon needs certain things, but I am Saturn, what are the ways that I am able to meet the moon's needs, and it's like I can meet those needs in a very systematic way. And I can control all of these factors to ensure that those needs are met in the most efficient way possible.

Kyle Pierce 2:49:31

Yeah. And how can we make this a model for for the world? Yeah, how can we make this the thing that everybody does?

Tristan Paylor 2:49:37

Yeah, as you get, you get the very transpersonal stuff going on with Saturn and Aquarius has more to do with society at large than just your own personal interests.

Ada Pembroke 2:49:48

And I think it shows the importance of dignity here because both of those planets are dignified and so neither of them are threatened and so it enables them to come together to create ate a mutually pleasing arrangement without having to deal with lack or any sense of threat on either side.

Tristan Paylor 2:50:10

Yeah,

Kyle Pierce 2:50:12

often, like hard relationships are just strong relationships between super dignified planets. You know, they tend to play out more favorably kinda, but sometimes they like. It's like too much, almost like where it creates an excess. And maybe this helped BF Skinner quite a bit because he became an authority on a subject. It's almost like there's too much authority sometimes where it's unwilling to see things outside of his personal viewpoint in ways that can be quite negative, maybe less so with Skinner. But

Tristan Paylor 2:50:49

well, there's definitely sort of a, like the legacy of behaviorism is sort of viewed in a negative light a lot of the time, especially in popular culture. I mean, some of these ideas are, you know, they're not necessarily pleasant to deal with, like, it's whether or not we do have free will. I mean, I personally believe that we do. But even if we don't, we need to believe that we do in order to function like it's just necessary that we believe in it. So worldviews that challenge our sense of personal agency and freewill are really challenging and tend to upset people. And I think another aspect to of behaviorism, and of BF Skinner's work, in particular that people would criticize is they felt it was manipulative. There's an approach, a behaviorist approach called token economies that are used and like, you know, hospitals, and just places where, you know, you have a bunch of people, and you're trying to discourage a social behavior, and encourage pro social behavior. So with token economies, people are able to sort of exchange like they do certain things, and they are rewarded with tokens, and then they can exchange those tokens for things that they might want. And sort of criticism of token economies as people feel like it's super controlling and manipulative. But the counter argument to that is, well, we throw people in jail. And we seem to be okay with that, which is also a way of controlling and manipulating behavior, but one that is even more dehumanizing than actually actively rewarding people for the stuff we want them to be doing for the pro social behaviors that makes society run more smoothly. So I think there is there's definitely a negative, his work was not universally, positively received. And I think, you know, when it comes to like, the household names in psychology, people don't remember Skinner as fondly as as other figures in the history of psychology. Probably because those ideas are challenging. I personally think he's a little misunderstood. I don't agree with everything. But yeah, with the stuff like, you know, positive reinforcement. Yeah, it's manipulative. It's absolutely their feelings. But everything that we do is manipulative. We're all manipulating. Yeah. It's like, how do we really like the Saturn answer is like, this is just the way socializing works. So how do we make the best way that yeah, that results in the most benefit for everybody?

Ada Pembroke 2:53:32

Right, it's manipulative. But that's that's exactly the point of the system. It's to change the way that people behave. Like it's, it's a tautology to say that it's, it's meant to be like, like, yes, that's the point.

Kyle Pierce 2:53:47

But anyway, maybe on like a closing note, for BF Skinner, maybe just thinking about, like, the house is between those two squares. The second and the fifth. Is you do notice, like his concern with resources, conservation of resources, in order to support, you know, fulfillment, you know, it's like, not like he he's, what would he say was what's dangerous leisure or free time? Or?

Tristan Paylor 2:54:13

He said, relaxation is done? Yeah.

Kyle Pierce 2:54:15

But it sounds like what he's talking about, like his utopia, he's also stating that like, yeah, we need the right amount of these things. So it's like he's really trying to answer these, like, kind of second fifth house questions. You know, how do we preserve resources create, you know, enough for everyone? And obviously, that's related to you know, how we balance our fifth house activities because obviously the Fifth house is important. But one of his things was that it results in too much consumption. You know, we consume too much we deplete our second house. So it's like the second house is trying to like, dominate the fifth, a little bit trying to control the fifth. decide, you know, how much a fifth house are We're going to do so that we can maintain the second house.

Tristan Paylor 2:55:04

I'm glad you brought that up, because that was also going to be my sort of finishing point was I think this is a good example of the house based aspects. And also, when you look at aspects between houses, it tells you something about those houses and also just something about the nature of life in general, the fact that they are placed the way they are, the second house being placed in the overcoming square position with the fifth house, points to that tension that I think we all experienced between livelihood and leisure. And what tends to win out right, like our need to survive dominates our desire for enjoyment. And not only, you know, in his sort of utopian vision, but also just in his personal life, he was a bit of a workaholic. And in his own personal life, I think his second house, his concern for his livelihood, and his career, you know, his career as a scientist, his career as a writer that dominated his fifth house concerns perhaps for enjoyment and relaxation.

Kyle Pierce 2:56:08

And is one of the ruler of his first houses. Second house

Tristan Paylor 2:56:13

ever everything is kind of headed in that direction. Anyway, it's all to the second house.

Kyle Pierce 2:56:19

Yeah, do we have anything else on? Yep. Skinner?

Ada Pembroke 2:56:22

This was a fantastic example.

Kyle Pierce 2:56:24

That was a really good one. I feel like

Ada Pembroke 2:56:25

I learned a lot.

Tristan Paylor 2:56:29

I did too. I, when I was doing my psych course, to help me remember, all of the important who was who I would just look up their charts. And I became, it's funny, because when I first started studying psychology, I was like, Screw behaviorism, this stuff sucks. And then when I actually started studying it properly, I was like, this is the best. I don't like agree that everything is not a behaviorist. But it's like this was the turning point in, you know, psychology becoming more scientific and evidence based. And that's really cool. And also just like, everything we knew about learning, like, it doesn't sound too crazy to teach pigeons how to play ping pong, like we're all training our pets to do all kinds of wacky stuff all the time now, but it's like those ideas originated here. We can take those things for granted now. Because folks like Pavlov and Skinner started actually studying how does learning work? And how do organisms, learn behaviors? And yeah, it all it all kind of started here. So then looking at his chart, I was like, this is super fun.

Kyle Pierce 2:57:40

It's a hard act to follow up. But I believe in you realize we've seen so much time on squares, but I least want to try to get these these two in. They are

Ada Pembroke 2:57:53

they are I think that they're maybe one of the hardest aspects to learn because I think we kind of understand you know, that we'll get to this when we talk about opposition's but the the polarity of an opposition. And you know, the easy aspects are easy, but I think that people are challenged the most by squares, which is extremely appropriate.

Kyle Pierce 2:58:14

And they certainly have a win think of all the aspects the most energy to them. They are very energetic, which can be positive and negative. Yeah, they demand a lot,

Ada Pembroke 2:58:28

as a fiery person I love I love squares, because I feel like it gives me energy somewhere to go.

Kyle Pierce 2:58:35

Do you have been thinking about that in terms of temperament? Like because I want to incorporate that into like, I want to make it just a really thorough system for evaluating temperament and just thinking about aspects how they might have temperaments of the nature of the planet that they're associated with. Like, squares do seem to have the nature of fire, which is heating and drying. So promoting energy, but also separation needing to to separate because you have to define that narrow ground the planets will agree on.

Ada Pembroke 2:59:09

And you have to be profoundly creative, which is associated with fire as well.

Tristan Paylor 2:59:14

For sure, yeah, squares force you to get creative.

Kyle Pierce 2:59:19

Okay, so I have it's kind of two charts. Reason I want to use both is because they are Time Twins these two and they have a very similar charts and very similar aspects happening. But the first one is Jennifer Lawrence. So Jennifer Lawrence has a Sagittarius rising with Jupiter in Cancer in the eighth hole sign house, but it's right at the end of cancer. Just an interesting component. But Venus is in Leo, at two degrees, trying the ascendant very tightly, the sons in Leo at 22 degrees. Also in the ninth hole sign house Mercury Aries on the midheaven at about 19 degrees in the 10th hole sign house in Virgo. And then you have Saturn in the second house at 19 degrees Capricorn. But then also the moon at 21 degrees of Gemini in the seventh hole sign house and Mars at 21 degrees of Taurus in the sixth hole sign house. And the main square that I wanted to focus on here is the one between Mars and the Sun. The Sun being at 22 degrees of Leo and Mars being at 21 degrees of Taurus, it's just barely separating square. But Mars is in the superior position. So it is sort of dominating the Sun to some degree, or trying to.

Tristan Paylor 3:00:47

Yeah, good luck with that. Yeah, that's

Kyle Pierce 3:00:49

what that's what makes this one very interesting is that you do have the sun in its own sign in some domicile. It's a joy in the house of joy. It's very powerful. Yeah, Mars is also in the house of its joy. But it's at your main detriment. Which doesn't necessarily I find make a planet weaker. Oh, yeah. You know, it might make it a little more rambunctious. Even Mars is

Tristan Paylor 3:01:17

trying to find something to do in the house of Venus thing again, I like your bowl. metaphor, Allah Aina, where Mars is, like, in the teashop and Mars needs something to do. Mars is not about like, you know, grace and elegance and softness. And so Mars is like, how do I be Mars in here and things are going smash Smash, but there are things like there are things in that house that Mars can definitely do. You know, yeah, find them.

Kyle Pierce 3:01:49

Yeah. So well, you know, the sun in Leo. It's like a performer, right? Which, you know, we have an actor, right? It doesn't, not really a huge surprise there. But when she was a child, she actually had issues with hyperactivity and social anxiety. She didn't fit in well with their peers. But when she started performing things around the age of nine, want to say her anxieties vanished when she was performing on stage and ditch acting gave her a sense of accomplishment. So after that, she got involved in cheerleading, but also sports, softball, field hockey, basketball, and she played on a boys team, coached by her father. She's also really into horseback riding, but she did have an injury, their tailbone result from being thrown from the horse, which, just with Mars in Taurus, while it's a horse, not on a bowl, just like literally being bucked off a horse and then having a success experience of venturing your tailbone. Anyway, one of the you like look it up, even in just like old traditional texts. Mars when it's overcoming the sun talks about fear and defeat, it's kind of like, anxiety inducing for her. The fact that she was able to like start doing the Leo thing. And that almost being the vehicle for her to overcome maybe the Mars problem to some degree, I find very interesting. Especially because the sun's within that hurling array range, which I think we talked about a little bit more

Tristan Paylor 3:03:28

interesting. Yeah, we did mention that. Yeah, so it's within that three

Kyle Pierce 3:03:33

degrees, it's able to like hurled right back at Mars, like, you know what I'm gonna perform anyway, fuck you. And that being a way to fight back. But uh, one of the things that seems to come out around Mars and Taurus still being able to sort of impose a bit on like, what maybe the sun is expressing or doing. And Her first acting assignment was, at age nine, she played a prostitute in a church play based on the book of Jonah. But with Mars and Taurus, it sort of carries the topic of sex and sexuality in Taurus, then Mars will, you know, has that sort of exploitative component, and she later ended up having there were nude photographs of her leaked for meant to be private between her and her partner, but they got leaked out to the world. And it was rather upsetting experience for her understandably. And Mars being in like the house of enemies, sucks house, people doing things that undermine you.

Ada Pembroke 3:04:35

Yeah, it's like those enemies are interfering with her ability to shine.

Kyle Pierce 3:04:39

Exactly. And it's like taking hits to like that, like has to attack the competence, right? Making you feel less competent in what you're doing mixing, making you want to maybe not shine as brightly which is very Mars, overcoming the sun. Sort of aspects, but she like kind of keeps coming back. She's still a really amazing actress to like, it's like, you know, you can't really keep her keep her down.

Tristan Paylor 3:05:06

It's almost like a, this could be the chart of many, many celebrities in a sense, like just that configuration illustrates the nature of celebrity, be famous performer, where you there's a lot of privilege that goes with being a celebrity. But there's also that sacrifice of, you know, the risks of people say, digging into your personal life and finding private material and having an incentive to expose that to the general public. And having that blow up. Because you have a relationship with the general public. Yeah, like, you know, your all the good things that come with fame are magnified. But there are all those risks that come with fame as well. Yeah, that's sort of like Mars. Mars is like, this is the risk of fame. Well, that's a really people will use it against you, and they'll do it on a public stage.

Kyle Pierce 3:06:08

That's a really good point. Especially when we get into our second chart, which is a comedian Bo Burnham, who, like I said, it's a bit of a time twin. He was born, what like, less than a week after Jennifer Lawrence, but has the exact same ascendant degree had two degrees Sagittarius. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's at this time, Jupiter is now in Leo, like that very beginning degree, trying the ascendant. And Venus is also in Leo, few degrees ahead,

Tristan Paylor 3:06:38

the sun's still overcoming everybody. Yeah, Mars

Kyle Pierce 3:06:41

is sort of dominating everybody. And Leo, is Mercury and the Moon in Virgo in the 10th hole sign house. But it's very similar chart, it's just the moons moved from Gemini over to Virgo. And Jupiter's moved into Leo. And the sun separating a little bit further from the square with Mars. And it's actually a little bit outside of that hurling array range. Technically speaking, it's about four degrees separated, which on the one hand look a little bit better in the sense that it's like, not as being you know, harshly stabbed by Mars. But it's also makes it maybe a little harder to, to fight back sometimes. And one of the, maybe more recently, even with Bo Burnham, the sort of known for his, and if you guys saw the comedy special inside, which is basically all about him, spending like the first year of COVID, like locked in his, it's like, the guest house, just recording, recording this one man show for like, a year by himself. And it was just all about how horribly depressed he was, basically, or just him confronting all of like, his personal shit, which has a lot to do with, like what you were saying, Tristan, sort of like that. The fear that comes with celebrity, it's like very comedy, it's very self conscious of like, he's a very self conscious Leo, basically, like very aware of, and condemning even of his desire, and like, need to be seen. But he obviously struggles with how much he loves, you know, being seen performing, but also how much he's afraid of criticism and how much he sort of hates himself a little bit for all the privilege that he has as a result. Like the whole special is like just talking about those themes in quite a funny way. But it's

Ada Pembroke 3:08:43

that it almost sounds like that might be an artifact of I see a couple of things here. One is Jupiter moving into Leo, which I think is a big factor but not relevant to, to the subject to the podcast, but but the the one that is relevant is what you said about the sun moving within range of out of range of being able to hurl rays back at Mars, it's almost like that Sun has been disarmed and doesn't have the same defenses that the sun and Jennifer Lawrence's chart has.

Kyle Pierce 3:09:19

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It doesn't quite have that ability to compete continuously fight back because he actually has it. Almost say like 2017 ish, basically stopped doing comedy for a long period of time, because he was just having panic attacks on stage. And he described it as like he was actually able to, she would have panic attacks like regularly while performing but he was able to perform through the panic attack. But it got to a point where it's just like I like I can't, I can't, I can't do it. And he's like, basically went into sort of hiding. And that was kind of like what got that whole special was about was that sort of confronting it and like making something because it's like the need to create is too strong like still needs to do it, despite maybe all the guilt that sort of comes there, which you don't necessarily think of when you think of Mars. But just thinking about like Mars, and its detriment in Taurus, one of the topics that like he has spoken a lot about, like he's very much aware of like his privilege as a male as like a straight white male, and is kind of constantly mocking it. He even like will kind of mock using your celebrity to become an advocate for like underprivileged people, or people who are, don't have as much privilege, basically. So Mars in Taurus, sort of like that perspective, maybe of having less privilege. It's Mars in detriment, right. And often, you'll sort of see issues around just women, but like, sort of sexuality. There's a movie that he was in guessing, promising young woman not seen it. It was It was basically a movie about a woman who seeks out revenge for her friend who was sexually assaulted by a group of men in college and ended up committing suicide. And in the movie plays a character that not to spoil it. But I should say, spoiler alert, he basically spent the movie thinking he's a nice guy, but he ends up being complicit in the assault. And his character is basically designed to turn the idea of the nice guy on his head. And the whole movie is really about exposing toxic masculinity. And you can see that symbolism of Mars taking on what you might call a feminine perspective. And sort of subverting the idea of the good guy, male figure, aka the sun in Leo, in the ninth house, conjunct Regulus no less. And you get the sense that there's a lot of ambivalence about maybe some of the attention or praise that he got for the role. And he's sort of like hated the attention that he got for it. But like, you can tell that he was doing it to make a statement as well, not doing it to make a statement. But like, it's like condemning the Leo thing, which is like, look at the thing that I did. Wasn't that so noble of me? I don't know the relationship with that getting credit for doing like, the nice that the not the nice thing, the the high minded thing, like sort of hating that credit, but also loving it at the same time. I think that is what I kind of joke about, or that's like, the essence of the comedy is like that kind of thing.

Tristan Paylor 3:12:34

This Yeah, it made me think about Lady Gaga, and made me want to look up her chart because I was a really big Gaga fan when I was younger and went to one of her concerts when she was doing the monster ball. I saw her live. Oh, yeah. And one of the things that she deals with heavily in her music is her relationship to fame. And there's that sort of tension between, I want to be seen, I love it. Like, you know, the song applause is very famous. And it's talking all about that, that like I want, I want the applause I live for this. But at the same time as being kind of critical of that desire. Yeah, and there was during the Monster Ball. There was there were a bunch of like little sort of short films that would go on in between songs. And there was one where it was like a short movie of her sort of getting ready to go out on stage and the sound of people cheering for her to return. She had like an oxygen mask over her face. And it was like that was the thing that was sustaining her life. And the imagery was just like so dark and gritty. And like borderline kind of disturbing. So yeah, like commenting on that weird relationship between like, I really want this and need this but I also recognize that there are sort of toxic elements to it as well. And I feel like critical of myself are guilty even for wanting this attention and for actually like being successful and getting the attention. Yeah, so yeah, okay, I have to look at her chart because I knew she had the sun in Aries. So another solar figure and she has Mars and Capricorn overcoming an Aries. So, in her case, it's maybe a little less self deprecating than Bo Burnham like both those planets are very dignified and a bit of, you know, understanding between them since Mars rules Aries, but I was thinking about her and then I was thinking about myself with the sun in Aries in the 10th house being overcome by both malefics and Capricorn and my also inner tension between I love attention I love being seen. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a famous actor. That was my dream. I wanted to be a performer. I love sharing stuff on social media. I just eat it up but I also feel incredibly like bad about myself for liking it. And I'm also terrified of criticism, like I have no armor for criticism. So it was interesting like you talking about both Bo Burnham who is out actually famous like you're playing with some of those topics, I think it's probably not an uncommon thing where we sort of like we want something but feel bad for wanting it at the same time. And how do we how do we resolve that tension, I think is that the essence of these squares? Like, those parts of all of us? I think, for the most part exists in tension. I don't, I don't know, maybe there are some people where they just don't feel any tension between their desire for attention and sense that like, Oh, am I being really narcissistic, or like, Oh, I'm taking a big risk by putting myself out there that like things about me, I don't want the world to know could be exposed or they might criticize me like, Yeah, I think most of us probably can relate to that, which is probably why inside was like, at one point, it was so successful. I imagine also, the fact that, you know, he was kind of, in a way it was a, a part piece on the pandemic, during the pandemic was another reason it got so big. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But I think that's part of it, too, that that tension that we all kind of struggle with.

Kyle Pierce 3:16:05

Once like, the willingness to face criticism is like a big part of maybe being a performer. I think one of the songs was, like, don't, you know, asking questions like, What would you think of the performance? What, blah, blah, blah, like, the chorus is like, don't tell me because I don't want to know. It was like, I don't actually want to know how you feel about it. I just like, just don't tell me because I hate it. I hate the idea about it. And that's like, the whole that's Mars, like overcoming the sun. It's like the the criticism maybe that Mars has for the sun? Or do they? Which often isn't necessarily playing out in reality, or it might be, but it may not be. It's not that it's irrelevant. It's like, if you're a performer, there are absolutely people who are going to criticize you. 100%. And if you can't handle that, then it's, you know, you can't really, cuz you're gonna struggle a lot, I guess, doing being a performer. And yeah, it's like, pretty much describing maybe his experience with that struggle. But it's also there's like, a lot of strong, like, ninth house component, too. And he was like, involved in, like youth church when he was younger. But he's also, you know, makes a lot of jokes that are sort of anti religious to a large degree.

Tristan Paylor 3:17:19

Mars overcoming the ninth house. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, maybe that's also part of bringing it back to the relationship between houses, the sixth house, overcomes the ninth house. And, you know, and the ninth house we can get a little high and mighty. And the sixth house is pretty down to earth and gritty, you know, this, the sixth house is pretty gritty of day to day life. Yeah. So it's sort of like, you know, this, the sixth house. The ninth house is kind of a luxury. And the sixth house is a necessity and necessity tends to overcome luxury. And then there's also the critical voice coming from the sixth house criticizing, you know, those people sitting on their, their comfortable cushions and their nice clothes up in the ninth house, dictating morality for the rest of us, you know, like, Catholic priests telling us how we should relate to our marriage partners and children, when they can't, they have no lived experience with that whatsoever. And sort of like your, you know, from your position, you're dictating morality to me, really. So I can, I can hear that sort of, Oh, yeah. Ting, Martian voice coming from the sixth house, talking to the ninth house like hey,

Kyle Pierce 3:18:33

absolutely. But then I thought, like the privilege of being able to sit on your armchair and like pontificate and philosophize, like that does necessitate a certain amount of luxury, while the sixth house is like, you know, having to work your ass off for everything. You just like being an employee. There's a historically it was like the house of like slavery, being enslaved. So it's definitely like a strong tension between the topic of people who have less privileged and people who have a lot and having a lot, but not necessarily feeling great about it. Yeah,

Tristan Paylor 3:19:10

well, not so easily. You can be knocked down from that high place, the sixth never coming.

Kyle Pierce 3:19:15

But um, any more thoughts? We should probably wrap up this episode? I was talking about squares.

Ada Pembroke 3:19:25

No, I think we're good. I'm good anyway.

Kyle Pierce 3:19:28

Okay, well, we'll call the day then. And where can people find you at what do you have going on these days?

Ada Pembroke 3:19:36

Oh, goodness. You can find everything that I'm doing on eight upwork.com You can also find me on Instagram is my main social platform Instagram at Ada Pembroke. The biggest thing that I'm doing right now is I'm available for astrology readings. I really enjoy working with people one on one and finding the golden those difficult placements, so

Kyle Pierce 3:19:59

I highly recommend I've had a reading with ADA and I can cannot recommend that Jesus cannot recommend it highly. And it

Tristan Paylor 3:20:05

was such a good experience that you're just tongue tied now.

Kyle Pierce 3:20:08

I seriously it was it was really good. I walked away feeling like super motivated and energized and like feeling connected with my wife, which is like what I want to feel after a wedding. And yeah, and I wanted a few things so highly recommended. What about you trusting? What do you have going on these days?

Tristan Paylor 3:20:29

There will be a link to my Instagram in the show notes. It's sable and Starlight. I am just basically making a Digital Journal of my explorations and magic and drudgery and stuff like that on Instagram and that's about all I've got going on. So awesome. If you want to if you're interested in nature based spirituality or magic and I you know, I post some stuff about astrological magic there too. And you want to be Mutual's, follow me, I'll follow you back. We can be internet friends.

Ada Pembroke 3:21:04

Cool. And you?

Kyle Pierce 3:21:06

Oh, yeah. Well, as for me, you can always always book a reading with me on my website, Kyle Pierce, astrologer.com. You can find, you know, everything I'm up to over there as well. I'm hoping to get this episode out this week, if possible, in which case, the symposium that Aida and I are both speaking in should still be ongoing. It's runs from what June 14 to the 21st. Yeah, so hopefully I have this out before the 21st. And I don't think you can still sign up. But I think even if you sign up afterwards, you can still get access to it. Hopefully, hopefully, but yeah, it's it's called Read becoming the one. Do you remember have to have it all off the top of your head? I can't remember now. Becoming the one the

Ada Pembroke 3:21:58

something something healing gender and sexuality.

Tristan Paylor 3:22:01

Yeah. That sums it up pretty well. Yeah.

Kyle Pierce 3:22:04

So what is your talk going to be about? Oh, yeah, my talk is gonna be? Well, it's basically about the gender rising of astrology, and how it sort of ties in with temperament. And how it's actually really ends up being more descriptive of temperament than, than it is gender, I find that the idea is to just reframe maybe the way that we look at astrology in a way that that doesn't just lump things into categories of like, oh, that's feminine, that's masculine, because I don't find that super useful, personally. Likewise, I'm also really bad at explaining what my talk is about. So you're just going to have to check it out and see.

Ada Pembroke 3:22:46

Well, you wouldn't need half an hour an hour, 90 minutes to give the talk if you could explain the entire thing in two sentences. Yeah, I'm going to be talking about Venus and the moon and Mesopotamia years Yeah. I can't wait to series either you on temperament like Absolutely. But it my talk is about how in Mesopotamia the moon was a god. And sometimes Venus was also a God. And so that also breaks down the, the gender binary as well. So

Kyle Pierce 3:23:15

yeah, I've always been interested in that how Mesopotamia was reversed for the masculine and the sun was feminine, right.

Ada Pembroke 3:23:24

And the moon rolled in the sun Sunday night, the sun was still the planet of the king, but the moon was in charge of everything, including the calendar, which is why they took such careful records because the moon is pretty hard to chase across the sky.

Kyle Pierce 3:23:39

Yeah. Well, yeah, I highly recommend checking that out. Oh, good. See you. Hi. katsu.

Tristan Paylor 3:23:47

Hi, buddy.

Kyle Pierce 3:23:49

I literally thought he was gonna say hi back to me. But we were saying hi. All right, well, that'll do it for the aspects part two, and I hope that you will all join us next time for what we what we got left got opposition's we got conjunctions and other relationships between science. So looking forward to that. We did it guys. Yay. Alright, see you next day.

Tristan Paylor 3:24:21

Thanks for listening.

Kyle Pierce 3:24:22

Thank you. If you have a question you'd like to hear answered on astrology hotline. Shoot us an email at astrology hotline pod@gmail.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai