Steven Forrest Evolutionary Astrology Podcast

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The Lunar Nodes Have Crossed The Pisces/Virgo Axis
The lunar nodes shifting into a new pair of signs is always a big deal. It happens every year and a half or so, and it impacts everybody, both personally and in the world’s headlines. A few weeks back, on January 28, the Moon’s (Mean) north node crossed the line and entered Pisces, where it will remain until it transitions into Aquarius on August 18, 2026. (The south node entered the opposite sign, Virgo, at the same time.) In this short essay, my intention is to put the personal meaning of the nodes shifting signs in the spotlight. Since we’ll all be experiencing some of this energy collectively, it will impact the positives and negatives of the wider world too. As always, we start by underscoring a point that is really the bedrock of evolutionary astrological theory: the south node of the Moon represents the gravity of old habits which are holding us back, while the north node symbolizes the remedy that can liberate us. In my own work, I view the soul cages represented by the south node as problems and challenges that originated in prior lifetimes, although other philosophies can be made to fit too. In any case, as the late, lamented astrologer and my dear friend, Michael Lutin, once put it, “the north node is the meeting and the south node is the bottle.” If you know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous, Michael really covered the essence of the point in those thirteen words. Listen in....
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25:30
Carl Jung, The Red Book, And The Birth of Psychology
Pluto, the “Lord of the Underworld,” was discovered on February 18, 1930 and announced publicly on March 13 of that year. While the exact dates are of limited importance in our work, Pluto’s discovery itself was momentous. From the astrological perspective, it marks nothing less than the collective human discovery of the unconscious mind. In essence, with the discovery of Pluto, we are talking about the birth of psychology as part of the human conversation. As ever, with massive astrological changes such as this one, it’s helpful to take a long-term perspective. Uranus was discovered in 1789 – and marked the (very Uranian) overthrow of the rule of kings along with the birth of scientific inquiry, even when it violated religious dogma. That didn’t happen on a single day! Similarly, Neptune was discovered in 1848 and it marked a massive change in the scope of human imagination and human spirituality – again, that’s something we can see clearly in retrospect, but not something that happened the very minute Neptune was found. In exactly the same fashion, the human discovery of the true extent of our inner world – our Plutonian unconscious mind – unfolded over a generation or two. Still, the astrological signature of the event itself dates to the physical discovery of Pluto back almost a hundred years ago. Listen In...
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20:51
“Malefic” Mars Vs. My Poor Ears
I cringe whenever I hear an astrologer call Mars a “malefic” planet. Mars can bring us so many gifts, starting with the courage to stand up for ourselves. It's got a dark side though – so do all the planets. Where Mars lies in your chart, you’ll definitely need some of that courage. That’s because Mars usually marks a place in your life where you’ll face some serious stress. Nobody enjoys that, even though we might learn some useful lessons in facing it down. I suppose that astrologers who miss the evolutionary point of that extra dose of tension are the real reason poor Mars got saddled with the “malefic” label. In my own chart, Mars is in the spotlight in many ways, starting with the fact that I’ve got Scorpio rising which makes Mars the traditional ruler of my chart. It’s also sextile to my Mars-ruled Aries Moon, which deepens my reactivity to it. Mars itself lies in Aquarius, in my 3rd house (Placidus) and in a conjunction with my late-Capricorn Mercury. Mercury and the 3rd house are both about communication, so those two features reinforce each other, and that’s the dimension of Mars that I want to explore in this newsletter. Listen in....
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23:37
Houses and Signs: Vive La Difference!
How many books on your astrology shelf contain a phrase like this one: If your Mercury is in Gemini or the 3rd House . . .? With two cents’ worth of logic, the conclusion is inescapable: the author is telling you that the two configurations mean the same thing. If A equals both B and C, then B equals C and there’s not a single scrap of wiggle room about that anywhere. The trouble is that in this case, B does not equal C. Houses and signs are not the same. They do overlap in meaning, as we will see. They are far from unrelated. But if you treat them as if they were interchangeable, your astrological work loses focus. Still, this is a painfully common error among astrologers. Even though many of those books I mention contain useful perspectives in other areas, when it comes to this issue they are the culprit. Learning to avoid this pitfall is not hard and it will take your work to the next level. Listen in....
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15:57
A New Birth Time for Agatha Christie
The 2:14 PM time of birth I use here for mystery writer Agatha Christie is new information. When I wrote about her in Yesterday’s Sky in early 2008, I used her then-current birth time of 4:00 AM, which I found on seemingly good authority. Later, it emerged that "a midwife named Mrs. Shelton-Price who, according to her bill, had charged one crown and two shillings to deliver Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller at 2:14 pm on Monday afternoon, September 15." This new time of birth now gives Agatha Christie’s chart a Rodden Rating of AA—and a very different look. What follows is a rewrite of my previous analysis. Consider it a replacement for chapter fifteen for all editions and printings of Yesterday’s Sky starting from 2008 and running into the third quarter of 2024. In all new printings, this chapter will replace the previous incorrect one. As ever, astrology’s Achilles’ Heel is bad birth information. With someone you know, you can often sense that something is off in the chart. With strangers, you’re much more vulnerable. Four billion copies of her books are in print. She is often described as the best-selling author in history. Her play, The Mousetrap, is the longest running one in the world, having opened in London on November 25, 1952 and still going strong as of this writing. But it is for her murder mysteries that Agatha Christie is best known. Her work practically defined the genre. Her vain Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, with his waxed mustache and his brilliant deductions humanized the infallible “Sherlock Holmes” archetype. Poirot is the only fictional character ever to be given an obituary in The New York Times, after Christie killed him off in her 1975 novel, Curtain. That’s some indication of the popularity of her work. Her delightful Miss Marple, who was at least as brilliant as Hercule Poirot and a lot more charming, made it safe for older, middle-class ladies on both sides of the Atlantic to have a formidable gleam of mischief in their eyes, along with garnering some respect for their well-tempered intelligence and insight. Anyone can say “don’t underestimate me.” Miss Marple’s irrefutable wisdom made that honorable sentiment irrefutable. Listen In...
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38:45