TRANSCRIPT FOR EPISODE 57 (11/23/2020)
Title:
057 | Learning from Neptune, Giving Thanks, & Our One-Year Podiversary!
Jen: Welcome to the Big Sky Astrology podcast, with April Elliott Kent and me, producer and cohost Jen Braun. Hey friends, Jen here. Today is November 23rd, 2020. And here with me of course, is my friend -who has been podcasting with me for a full year – astrologer April Elliott Kent. Hi, April.
April: Happy Podiversary, Jen!
Jen: Podiversary!
April: And you’re bringing it today! You’re bringing the energy. I like it!
Jen: Thank you so much! We’ve got to bring it for the listeners. Don’t you think?
April: We do. We really do. We have been bringing it to our listeners for a full year, now.
Jen: Yes.
April: I remember that that episode was on Thanksgiving week. We tried this bold adventure for several weeks before the New Moon. And I know we did our little trailer, our little preview of “Coming Attractions” episode, but we both had sort of an interesting November last year. So we kept getting setback a little bit in our schedule. But yes, we talked quite a lot about Thanksgiving because it was that Thursday.
Jen: It was indeed. We talked about pie.
April: We talked about pie because that’s what we do. And I realized when I listened back to that episode today that we were talking about “The Crown.”
Jen: Oh, and here is season four of “The Crown.”
April: Season four. Our oldest imaginary sponsor. That’s Netflix.
April: We’re watching it. We watched the first episode last night.
Jen: And what did you think?
April: I really like it. Boy. I really liked that actor that’s playing Prince Charles. He was in another series we like, the Durrells of Corfu. A very sweet show.
Jen: Yes. You’ve told me about that one.
April: So it was very good. Yes, we’re enjoying it. But I remember last year on Thanksgiving being at my brother’s and watching half a season, half season three of “The Crown” on Thanksgiving. So it was a good Thanksgiving. I think this Thanksgiving isn’t going to be quite as festive for us because we won’t be traveling and spending it with our family.
Jen: We are in pandemic times. Will you be staying in and will you be zooming with family or anything like that?
April: I don’t know if we’re going to zoom or not. We’re going to try to get up there between Thanksgiving and Christmas, just the very immediate family, and do a little get together. But our family Thanksgivings tend to be a little bit of a scene. There are always a lot of people. And my sister’s house is a little on the smaller side than the one she used to have. So it just didn’t feel like a good fit for us this year. But I think we are going to get takeout from our favorite local vegetarian restaurant that does a really, really spectacular Thanksgiving feast, apparently.
Jen: Sounds delicious.
April: Yes. Probably watch “The Crown.” If there are any left for us to watch by then. I don’t know; we tend to get through these things at a bit of a pace. What about you? Will there be pie?
Jen: We will be zooming with Joanie’s family at one point in the day and then with my family at a different point in the day. So we will see our family over zoom, but not in person. I’m not sure there will be pie. There will be some kind of Thanksgiving-y food, let’s say.
April: Well you have to have those herbs and spices. I always think that I could just boil a chicken and put some thyme and some sage in it, and I would have Thanksgiving.
Jen: Yes.
April: The smell of it would be most equivalent.
Jen: Chicken might be what we’re doing. We’re not really 100% sure yet. Joanie did pick up a box of stuffing from the grocery store, so there’ll be some kind of stuffing, probably.
April: Mmm. Stuffing, that would be easy to make.
Jen: Mashed potatoes and gravy for sure.
April: Oh, yum.
Jen: And then… have we talked about cranberries?
April: I don’t know if we did. I think we may have, because I know Jonny, my husband, is one of the few people in our family that likes cranberry sauce. So we always have it. But it’s the can…
Jen: Yes!
April: …is that what you do? Do you get the can?
Jen‘ Well, there are different kinds of cranberries of course, but what I grew up with and what I really love is the can of cranberries that is jellied – and you get the lines of the can on it.
April: Yes! So that tells you how to slice it! I think it’s great for portion control.
Jen: And that’s what I love. I love the kind with the lines.
April: So, you’re not going to be getting haute couture and all Martha Stewart with it or anything?
Jen: No, I definitely know people who make homemade cranberry sauce. And that is also delicious. There’s something very delicious about that, but I do love that chilled, canned cranberry sauce.
April: Well, it’s the sad little can that’s at my sister’s that’s always sitting there lonely until – at the last minute – someone remembers, “Oh, the cranberry sauce.” We’re already sitting down eating and somebody has to go get out the can opener crank that sucker out.
Jen: Sure.
April: I probably will make pecan pie though.
Jen: That sounds delightful.
April: And just share it with my neighbors or something because – yum! So, fear not dear listeners. There will be pie!
Jen:
April: But it’s been quite the year of The Big Sky Astrology Podcast.
Jen: It sure has. It’s really hard to believe on one hand that a whole year has gone by, and on the other hand it just seems like a month to me really. And I know we’ve talked about this before, but it is just so hard to remember a time when we weren’t podcasting together. And this is just such a delightful part of my life. I just love doing it.
April: And mine as well.
Jen: Yay!
April: We’ve had so much fun, and we had our Podathon that was such a trip at Labor Day, and so much fun with that. And I just love that you’re such a game gal, Jen. I’ll say any crazy thing and you’re just, “Okay, sure. We’ll do that.” So I really appreciate that. And it has been fun. Well, we thought we would share with our listeners one little gem from our very first episode. Let’s climb into the way-back machine. Shall we?
Jen: Let’s climb in right now!
Jen: Hello friends, and welcome to our first week at the Big Sky Astrology podcast. I’m producer and cohost Jen Braun. I’m here with renowned astrologer and my cosmic collaborator, April Elliott Kent. Hi, April.
April: If you’re a Leo, always work with a Libra, they will just make you feel like the best thing that ever lived!
Thank you, Jen. What a sweet Intro. I don’t think I’m renowned, but that’s okay. That’s very, very sweet. Thank you. I’m delighted to be with you and very excited about launching this new project with you.
Jen: Yeah, me too.
April: Oh, yes. It seems like it was just yesterday, Jen…
Jen: …just yesterday that we talked about that.
April: Well, many thanks to our lovely listeners, many of whom have been with us pretty much since the beginning and watched our whole evolution.
Jen: We have had a lot of faithful listeners and we appreciate all of you because without you, there would be no podcast.
April: Very true. Well, what have we got on our show sheet for this week?
Jen: We’re going to start with Mercury trining Neptune this week, April, on November 23rd at 08:39 PM Pacific Time. What can you tell us about Mercury in a trine to Neptune?
April: It’s always Mercury first!
Jen: Every minute of every day for every podcast that we do!
April: Imaginary sponsor, Mercury. Brought to you this week by a trine to Neptune!
Jen: Brought to you by the planet of communication!
April: Exactly. And the good thing to know about that is it’s sort of giving us a set up for something slightly more significant this week, which is Neptune changing direction…
Jen: Yes. Right.
April: On November 28th. And we’ll talk about that in just a moment.
Jen: Okay.
April: Mercury trine Neptune is one of those very fleeting aspects. It doesn’t last very long. Mercury, of course the planet of how we absorb and process and disseminate information out into the world. Having it trine Neptune is a bit of a mixed blessing because on the one hand it’s very imaginative and it’s very artistic and it’s very creative. And it says you can do lovely things with all this information that you have been taking in and you can create some art with it or music or poetry, or just say things in a really lovely way. On the downside, as we know, aspects to Mercury can make us, especially with Mercury, make us a little befuddled, a little muddy headed. And especially because it’s a trine. Because with a trine, there is nothing to get in the way of Neptune doing what it does best, which is to just really make us mellow to the point that weren’t just not thinking clearly at all. So all we will say is on this day that we’re having this Mercury aspect with Neptune, see if you can’t organize your life in such a way that there are optimal opportunities for enjoying or creating art and whatever that means to you. And it can also be consuming art. It can be really getting engrossed in a book or a TV show or music or something like that. That’s one of the things that can actually help your mind work a little more effectively when we’re dealing with an aspect like this, is dissatisfying Neptune with some of the things that he likes.
Jen: Yes. Because Neptune at its essence is really about bringing us out of ourselves, right?
April: Yes. To sort of ask the question, “Who would I be if I didn’t know who I was?” So if I didn’t know what my name was. Say, you have amnesia and you’ve just kind of woke up and you have no idea who you are, what your name is, what your biography is, what your relationship status is. You don’t know any of it. You don’t know what you’re supposed to be. And more importantly, you don’t know what you’re not supposed to be. You know?
Jen: Yes.
April: All of the things that society and your family and your partner and everybody has reinforced for you over the years now is not really cast in stone, necessarily. So yes, it’s a good day to get out of being who you always are… to figure out which could be the story that you want to tell. So Mercury eases us into this week where Neptune is going to be a major player by saying, “Hmm, how could your life be a little more Neptunian in a good way?” We’ve both been suffering from some Neptune-itis because we’re having transits of Neptune to our birth charts.
Jen: Yes.
April: That’s not super easy. But this is a nice short aspect, so we can dwell on the more positive sides of it.
Jen: Should we tackle the Neptune direct next?
April: We may as well. We’re skipping Venus, but she will forgive us. I think.
Jen: We’ll come back to her. Yes.
April: Alright.
Jen: So Neptune’s been going retrograde, which means from our perspective on Earth, it appears that he has been moving backwards – and at 18° and 9 minutes of Pisces on November 28th – he holds still in the sky to face forward. Will the fog lift, April? That’s the question I want to know the answer to.
April: I am never sure with Neptune. I don’t know which way that works. I always think when he’s turning retrograde that the fog goes out.
Jen: Oh…
April: Because his normal function is to cloudy things a little bit. But we’ll see whichever way it works. I like the Sabian symbol that Neptune’s turning direct on, which is “A Master Instructing His Pupil.”
Jen: That is a nice one.
April: Yes. I think we talked about that one last episode or the episode before.
Jen: We did. Yes.
April: It’s kind of a busy symbol at the moment because Neptune’s hanging out there so much. So yes. Neptune turned retrograde on June 22nd and it’s been apparently backward all that time. And now going direct it is that we like to see that the Sabian symbol promises that we are learning something from this. Neptune is the master here instructing us as his pupils. And saying, you know, again, what we often say about Neptune is about going with the flow. And interestingly enough, we talked about Neptune turning direct on our very first episode, Jen.
Jen: Yes. Because I remember you describing it as the elephant in the room sitting down. Boom. I think…
April: How clever. Maybe that was just Spike in the background, kind of colliding with my laptop.
April: He used to sit over my shoulder and watch me when we were recording back then. Well, why don’t we play a little clip? Why don’t we get it the way-back machine, and play a little clip?
Jen: Sure. Let’s.
April: The larger planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are retrograde for half the year. So generally speaking, I don’t put a lot of emphasis on whether they’re direct or retrograde unless they are changing direction. Because they have a couple of days that it’s like if you picture a gigantic animal, a huge elephant in the zoo or something, stirring from a seated position and standing up, that’s kind of the energy of one of these big planets changing direction. You really notice them. They’re the elephant in the room. So Neptune’s been retrograde for a while, about six months, and now it’s going direct. And Neptune direct just means we get a jolt of Neptune energy, like a little earthquake for a couple of days, or since it’s Neptune more accurately, probably like a tidal wave for a couple of days.
So what is Neptune energy?
Jen: Right. I was just going to ask that. Hey, that’s my job!
April: I’m anticipating here because Neptune is the planet of intuition!
So, Neptune’s a planet of intuition, and it’s a planet about seeking reality. So it’s a planet that both symbolizes the way we fool ourselves in the illusions that we hold, and also the ways in which we’re trying to seek the greater truths.
It’s a planet of magic and of music and dance and fiction and imagination and all of that. You can really get into the Neptunian mindset if you imagine a time that you were sitting at the edge of the ocean and listening to the waves. I always like to use the metaphor that it’s the tide coming in and tide going out, and when the tide comes in, it brings interesting things from other lands, you know, license plates from far away states or messages in bottles or whatever it is. But when the tide goes out, sometimes it takes things too, and it doesn’t always take things that we wanted to let go of. So it is a planet of some sorrow. And some grief. And we did have a particularly difficult Scorpio season, and not just you and me, although I know you and I had our struggles individually. But for a lot of people, it was a really intense Scorpio season.
Jen: I’ve heard that too. I was getting a massage yesterday and my massage therapist actually said, “I’ve been hearing all kinds of stories from people about this,” just a lot of, what were the words she used? Something around violent things happening. And a lot of misfortune happening to people. And it was interesting to hear from her perspective as a massage therapist that she’d been also hearing a lot of sad stories, you know?
April: Well, because she hears the stories and she experiences the stories in people’s bodies as well. You know, she’s feeling it there, she knows it’s there. Neptune is that dimension of us that sees what isn’t evident to the naked eye. You know? So Neptune going direct is a time when the tide is coming in, and just as it’s recently taken some things out, it’s going to bring new things in. New opportunities to look at the world in a slightly different way. And think of the more beautiful things you’ve ever found on the beach because it can bring beautiful things.
April: I’m not sure I could improve on that little bit of wisdom that I shared from our very first episode.
Jen: Why mess with perfection?
April: That’s right. It’s nice to share that with the people again.
Jen: Yes. Hey April, so Neptune’s turning direct at 18 Pisces and I know that the Nodes of the Moon are at 19 or 20. He is squaring the Nodes, more or less. Does that play any part in this stationing direct?
April: I think it very definitely does. And we’ve been talking about the Nodes since they moved into that axis of Sagittarius and Gemini and the struggle to stay open to new facts and new possibilities. And the South Node side of us and Sagittarius saying “No, you know, everything you need to know, don’t bother us with the facts.” And Neptune splitting the difference there being right between those two points, definitely I think makes it a little harder to nail down with any precision exactly what we think or what is true or what’s really going on. I mean, we have seen this in the aftermath of the US presidential election; we have a lot of confusion and that sort of thing.
So I think that’s one expression of Neptune with the Nodes and we’re probably all experiencing it on our own personal level as well in our own lives. And if you can think about, “Where am I having a hard time navigating between what I really know and what I wish were true versus leaving myself open, to finding out more about what actually is going on and what is really true and getting different opinions?” Oh, Neptune, a harsh master. But we are his willing pupils.
Jen: Well, very good.
April: Well, I suppose we should backtrack.
Jen: Yes, let’s go back to Venus. Shall we?
April: Yes. So, our friend Venus is opposing Uranus on November 27th at 09:10 AM, at the midpoint of a cycle between the two planets that began on March 8th, 2020. Again, a very familiar timeframe when things were starting to really get altered in our environment. I realized we haven’t actually spoken about Venus opposed Uranus before. Because the last time it happened was in October of 2019.
Jen: Wow. And that was before we were podcasting.
April: Right.
Jen: Do you want to say what an opposition is?
April: Yes. An opposition of course is when the planets are usually in opposite signs. If it’s in an exact opposition, they are going to be an opposite signs. And the way I always think about oppositions is that each of the planets is headed for the same goal, the same point, but they’re coming at it from entirely different directions. The way I find oppositions playing out in real life, like you might take the case of Venus opposed Uranus. Sometimes you might play the Venus role in the opposition, which is you’re deeply intuitive, you have strong attachments to people, to situations, sometimes even to things… although that’s less Scorpio’s game. And then sometimes you’ll be Uranus, which is needing things to change. Scorpio doesn’t like things to change. And Uranus is in Taurus, who also doesn’t like things to change. That’s why Uranus has been so sensitive when it gets aspected by faster moving planets. Because it’s already cranky. So it’s like, you get a faster moving planet come along to aspect. And it’s like poking a bear, because Uranus is just ready to be set off.
I mean, if we take the case of relationships, which are ruled by Venus… and we look at the opposition to Uranus, and we think, “Okay, well this is probably a turning point in people’s relationships.” And we can imagine that having been confined together 24 hours a day since March, when we had the conjunction of Venus/Uranus, I think it’s probably natural that disagreements between people have gotten a little bit amplified, maybe. And also with Uranus, there’s always this intense desire to have space, you know?
Jen: Freedom. Yes.
April: Yes. And freedom. And we’ve had to really negotiate that with our partners, with people that we live with. And even with our friends. With our friends, it’s the: Okay, some people are pretty comfortable getting together, with, or without masks. Some people are a lot more concerned, maybe they’re in a high-risk group or something. And so, there is like a little too much distance with the Uranus. So it’s trying to find that balance really between being together just too much and not being able to be together with some people at all. So we’re at the opposition point with this. That was where it started was in March, was to say, “Okay, this is a new situation. We’re going to be together all the time.” And people had to learn to work together at home, and they had to learn how to school their children at home. And they had to share the kitchen at lunchtime and all kinds of things that are a little bit irritating. Well, now we’re at the opposition point where we say, “Okay, well, how are we doing with that?” And sometimes we might play Venus, which is “No, everything’s pretty good.” Sometimes we might play Uranus, which is “No, this has really got to change.” And we’ll just vacillate back and forth. And our partners will, and our friends will, until we approach something that looks a little more like balance, which is what an opposition is trying to reach.
But, I think it’s so helpful to remember that about oppositions – when we are apparently very polarized with other people – is to know that essentially we’re going towards the same goal most of the time… it’s just getting there. And that’s why the Lunar Nodes have been so instructive and so interesting because that’s a built-in opposition. The North Node is in one sign, opposite the South Node in another sign. So we get to meditate on that all the time with the Lunar Nodes. This is just one more opposition. And it’s about again, things need to change. We need to change how we are relating to each other, so we can have a little more space and autonomy perhaps, but not too much. And it’s usually harder for one person in that scenario to kind of admit it. And that’s the Venus person.
Jen: I think you’ve talked a little bit about this idea… in this case, for example, you can either be Venus in Scorpio or you can be Uranus in Taurus, and there might be different points in different relationships that you have where you represent one or the other. And I think that’s interesting, because before you and I started podcasting every week, I had never really thought about it that way. That in all of these aspects, even when we have squares and conjunctions and things like that, it can oftentimes be that you are sort of acting out one of those parts, isn’t it?
April: Yes. That’s what’s exciting about it. And as you say, it’s very fluid. And sometimes within the course of a given argument with somebody, you’ll play one role and then you’ll play the other.
Jen: How confusing!
April: It is confusing. But to think that what they basically want is balance in relationship between autonomy and togetherness. That’s all Venus/Uranus wants.
Jen: Well, very good. What do we have next on the show sheet, pal?
April: Jen?
Jen: April?
April: Do you know what time it is?
Jen: I think I know what time it is, but I’m not positive. What time is it?
April: Moonwatch…
Jen: Moonwatch…
April: Play it!
April: Oh my goodness! The good old Moonwatch! There was a time we did not have a song for Moonwatch, and those were sad, sad days.
Jen: We cried every episode.
April: We did. And if people would like to go back and listen to when we introduced our Moonwatch song…
Jen: What episode was that, pal?
April: It was actually Episode 16, but I would like to, if we may…?
Jen: Yes?
April: Crawl back into our way-back machine just one more time to play a clip from Episode 17, “Saturn in Aquarius: All in this Together” where we have actually at that point heard how the Moonwatch song is going to fit into the whole episode.
Jen: Let’s hop in!
April: Shall we?
Jen: Yes!
April: Alright!
April: Now, I was very excited last week about the introduction of our Moonwatch theme. It’s extremely dramatic to me. And it has that breaking news feel that we were really looking for.
Jen: It’s a newscast stinger.
April: It is. And we certainly hope that people are enjoying it. As you could hear us giggling away underneath it last week.
Jen: Shall we play it again for people?
April: Oh, I think you should.
Jen: There it is.
April: It just makes us really sound important and it’s thrilling. I mean there’s just no other word for it.
Jen: Yeah.
April: It’s better with the Moonwatch song, right?
Jen: It just makes it more professional, I think.
April: It does.
Jen: There’s nothing that we’re not about if it’s not professionalism…
April: We are nothing if not professional…
Jen: Exactly!
April: Well, this is one of those very rare weeks – I think we’ve only had one before now – that we don’t have a major lunation this week. Because we just missed the Full Moon Lunar Eclipse, which is on Monday, which of course we will devote quite a lot of time to talking about next week. But what we can do this week is talk about the Gibbous Moon phase, because that does form this week on November 25th, at 10:19 PM Pacific Time. And it is at 19° and 27 Aries. Our little “Young Girl feeding the Birds in Winter,” who we’ve talked about before.
Jen: We have.
April: And the Sun is at 5 Sagittarius “An Old Owl up a Tree.” I like that this is the sweet innocent impulse to feed the helpless or help people who need us in hard times. But I like that vision of the old owl up in the tree reminding us that, you know, you cannot want a helpful outcome more than the person that you’re trying to help. So it’s just a little lesson here to us about getting too involved in helping or – God help us – changing another person. And so that, to me, speaks to the heart of the Gibbous Moon. Because the people I’ve known who were born at this lunar phase really want to be helpful. And they really – especially when they’re young – tend to get drawn, especially, to relationships with somebody who needs some fixing. They like a fixer-upper in a relationship. But it’s a very good reminder that we can’t want things for people that they don’t want. We can’t make their situations change.
Jen: Yes. Where does the Gibbous Moon fall, then?
April: Between the First Quarter Moon and the Full Moon.
Jen: Could you tell us about the Gibbous Moon phase?
April: The word Gibbous is an interesting one. It means humpback, sort of. It’s like, if you look up at the Gibbous Moon in the sky, it looks so close to full. And then you can be the smart aleck that says, “No, it’s actually Gibbous. Look, there’s that little piece, it’s a little bit…”
Jen: “Missing.”
April: Yes. “A little bit unbalanced looking and a little bit like it’s bulging on one side.” And it actually is a really, to me, a key facet of understanding this phase because everything looks so ready, it looks so full. It’s like the thing that you initiated action on at the First Quarter, and now you just really want to be running with it. But the Gibbous Moon says “You’re not 100% there.” And the analogy I might’ve used before on the podcast that I used it in my book, was that if you’re baking a pie – or let’s say a cake, just to be a little more… what do I want to say?
Jen: “Bakery welcoming?”
April: Yes, “Inclusive.”
Jen: Inclusive of baked goods!
April: To be more dessert inclusive! So you’re baking a cake and it looks so done. No, back up. Pumpkin pie is the perfect example. Because, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to bake a pumpkin pie….
Jen: I have. Sure.
April: But there comes this point, it looks so done, it looks incredibly done. And then you dip your fork in there and it’s just wet. And the tricky thing is, you know, it has to stay a little bit wet when you take it out, because it’s going to continue to set up and you don’t want it to dry out, but you’re just not completely sure. That’s what a Gibbous Moon is. We think that we’re ready with it, we think it’s done. We made this big push at the First Quarter and “Wow. I made this pie. It’s going to be really delicious.” And we take it out and say, “Oh, is it ready to come out of the oven?”
Well, Gibbous Moon is that part where we make that determination, where we figure it out. You go, “Maybe I’ll jiggle it a little bit, maybe ask my grandmother or whoever I can ask that knows about these things.” And find out what we do to make this determination.
It’s really very much about judgment in a lot of ways, this phase of the Moon. It’s when the Moon is 135° ahead of the Sun. And if you had a pie and you cut it into four sections, and then you cut each of those sections in half, you’ve got the eight phases of the Moon. So, beginning at the left, you’ve got the New Moon and that’s the first slice. And that takes you up to the Crescent Moon. And then between the Crescent Moon and the First Quarter, there’s a slice. And then between the First Quarter and the Gibbous Moon, that’s the whole First Quarter slice. And then you get to this Gibbous Moon part. So it’s between the First Quarter slice and the Full Moon slice.
Jen: It’s basically a square and a half.
April: Exactly. 135° can be a hard one to find by eye when you’re getting used to them. But know that you can look in the sign that is trine the Sun’s sign. So for instance, at this Gibbous Moon, the Sun is in Sagittarius and the Moon is in Aries. So not taking apart the degrees they are at or anything, we know those two signs would naturally be trine each other because they’re of the same element. Right?
Jen: Fire.
April: Yes. They’re both fire. So just take that relationship and say, “Okay, if it’s 5° of Sagittarius is the Sun, then the perfect trine would be 5° of Aries from there.”
Jen: I’m with you.
April: And then if you put 15 more degrees on top of that…
Jen: It’s 20°.
April: Yes.
Jen: If it was at 5° and then you added 15°, you would be at 20°.
April: Correct. At 20. And so that is where we find this Gibbous Moon here. So it takes a little bit of… until you get used to seeing them… and I’m still not completely used to seeing them in a chart. I have to think about it. I have to do the math. I mean, the two are in a terrible aspect to each other at a Gibbous Moon, the Sun and the Moon. It’s a sesquiquadrate, which is a most uncomfortable aspect. It’s like a cross between a square and a semi-square. And it’s incredibly aggravating and irritating. And the nature of the Gibbous is, again, we’re making judgments and determinations and it’s really hard to figure out if we have really gotten it right. It begins at a point in the cycle that actually is very creative. It’s sort of associated with Leo in some ways when it starts. Leo! And so we know that there’s a fiery stubborn, creative quality to the Gibbous Moon.
I know Dana Gerhardt, who’s brilliant with the lunar phases, talked about the Gibbous Moon, and she said, “It’s very much like that point where you’re in childbirth and really not happy about the situation you’re in, but you don’t have a whole lot of choice. You’ve got to soldier on…”
Jen: You have to keep going…
April: Yes. And that’s kind of where we are. It’s perseverance is the key, I think, of the Gibbous Moon.
So, a lot of this week from November 25th, up to the Lunar Eclipse on the 30th, which of course is a perfect Full Moon, then we’re dealing with this Gibbous Moon and this the time to persevere.
Jen: Birth it.
April: Birth it. Keep your heart and your determination and soldier on. But don’t think you’re done too soon because the Full Moon to Gibbous looks like the finish line. So just don’t push it too hard.
Jen: Well, that math really helps my analytical brain…
April: Oh, good. Okay.
Jen: …with how you explained that. Because we know, for example, that on that day, the Sun is at 5° Sagittarius. and really you’re just moving one trine over plus 15°. So in my brain, that makes a lot of sense because that would be Aries 5°… and then add the 15. So, 20° Aries. And that’s exactly where the Gibbous Moon falls, 20° Aries.
April: Excellent.
Jen: So if that makes sense for anybody else’s brain, if they have Mercury in Virgo, maybe it does.
April: Well, these are minor. I mean, I don’t say they’re minor phases, but they have their origins in minor aspects. That doesn’t mean they aren’t powerful aspects and powerful phases, but they’d take a little more work to get to, to see. And I think that also fits the nature of the Gibbous Moon. It’s a little more hard work.
Jen: Right on.
April: Yes. There you go. Well, my friend…
Jen: Alright.
April: …I think that’s everything on the show sheet. Have we done it?
Jen: We’ve done one year!
April: Wow! I’m super proud of us, pal!
Jen: Yes. That’s not small.
April: No, it’s wonderful.
Jen: Yes.
April: And it’s been a funny year. So it really does seem like it got here fast.
Jen: Absolutely.
April: Well, we want to thank all of you who listen week after week to The Big Sky Astrology Podcast. And if you like the show, we hope that you will subscribe in whatever podcatcher you use, because it does help people find the show, apparently. You can also leave us a rating or review, and we hope that you will help us the word by telling a friend or sharing our episodes on social media. You can read show notes and full transcripts and leave your comments about each episode – which we eventually get around to answering, sometimes on the air – at our website, bigskyastropod.com.
Jen: We’re so grateful to everyone who showed support during our Podathon a couple of months ago. Each week, as you know, we’ll be thanking one or two of you by name. Who do we have this week, pal?
April: This week we want to give a Big Sky Astrology shout-out to Laura Looney and Natori Moore.
April: We appreciate you both. And we thank you so much for listening to our podcast and supporting our Podathon mission. I know Laura has a lovely doggy named Dixie. So we’re giving a hardy hello to that sweet little pooch as well. And Natori has been my close astro-pal for many years, ever since I moved to San Diego, practically. She and I are tight buds and she’s a very smart astrologer and a very lovely person. And she is my fellow devotee of the movie “Clueless.”
Jen: Okay.
April: So, all of our texts and emails are basically in Clueless dialogue. So thank you Natori – you’re a pal – and to Laura as well. I like to say Laura’s name. Laura Looooney.
Jen: It’s a great name!
April: It is a great name!
Jen: They both are, actually! And I want to thank both of you as well for supporting the podcast. We really appreciate you. If you’re a listener who didn’t get a chance to support us during the Podathon, you can always make a donation at our website, bigskyastropod.com. And if you donate $5 or more, we’ll invite you to our special episodes for the Equinoxes and Solstices. And there’s a very big December Solstice coming up, isn’t there?
April: Yes, we are just getting ready to record that right after Thanksgiving.
Jen: Yes.
April: So yes, you’ll want to be in on that. That is it for us this week. Join us again, bright and early next Monday. And until then, keep your feet on the ground.
Jen: …and your eyes on the stars.
Thank you for listening. To learn more about April Elliott Kent, please check out her website, www.BigSkyAstrology.com, where you can sign up for her newsletter, read her thought-provoking weekly essays, purchase her books, sign up for a personal astrology reading, and more.
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© 2020 April Elliott Kent & Jennifer Braun
