Michael Suter Ancient Astrology

[Speaker 2] (0:00 - 4:10) You are now listening to the Here for the Truth podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. All right, everybody, welcome to the Here for the Truth podcast. I'm Joel Rafiti, I've got my co-host Yerasimos with me as always. We just finished spending nearly a couple of weeks together, had a beautiful time in Topanga, hanging with my boy, had my daughters collecting chicken eggs. It was great. It was a nice time, man. They're obsessed now. They literally have Sophie sending her chicken videos all the time, sending them chicken videos all the time. Yeah, busted some karaoke on Yerasimos' birthday. Nice little lab there on ForgottoBeAndre. If you want the exclusive video, you'll have to join Friends of the Truth. We just finished an incredible conversation with Michael Suter on, you know, planets, astrology, and archetypes, and how they relate to one's psyche, and really the ancient meaning and ancient tradition behind this system of knowledge. And just a really basic practical path forward for people to begin to grasp and understand this information in a way that I feel is kind of, you know, not really being broadcast in the way it should be. So absolutely love this conversation, and we really hope that you do too. Yeah, I really enjoyed it too. And before we bring Michael on, I just want to say we just have a couple more days left before we start our Rise Above the Herd group coaching program. So anyone that's listening to this, if you're feeling that nudge, if you're feeling that thing deep inside that whisper that, like, life can be more, that you can achieve the things that you want to achieve, if you're feeling stuck, or if you just want to take things to the next level, this is the sixth time and maybe the last time we're running this program live. We've run it five times already, like, it's had such a great impact. And so, you know, go to riseabovetheherd.co, read everything that we put on that website, on that landing page, you know, read the testimonials of the people that have come before this. And if you feel it deep in your gut and your heart that you want to go on this journey with Joel and myself, just, you know, press apply, fill an application and get on a 20 minute call with us. So yeah, that's it. And let's bring Michael on. All right, everybody, welcome to episode 129 of the Here for the Truth podcast. Today we have a very interesting guest with us. Today we have Michael Suda. Michael is a consulting astrologer, a theoretician on the subject of ancient astrology and pagan thought forms. He's a Tai Chi teacher and practitioner in Chen style. He's a university trained double bassist, actively performing jazz rock and ethnic musics with many bands. He's an avid kayaker and hiker, a forager, and a mycologist, and a father of three kids. Michael is most recently the author of Venus in Virgo, archetypes of goddess consciousness in astrology. This is a unique book in the field of astrological literature that investigates and explores traditional pagan ideas, as well as modern ideas on philosophy, psychology, polarity, goddess archetypes, and how archetypes function within astrology. He also co-owns Moonlight Designs, which is a screen printing business with his partner Pam, who created all the artwork for this book. Michael, I love everything about that bio. Like I mentioned, briefly chatting off air, very, very similar interests. You know, my first instrument was bass, deeply into, you know, astrology and the correlations between astrology and psychology as well. So awesome to have you, man. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me. This is totally awesome. It's great to meet you guys. Yeah, absolutely, dude. Man, one way, you know, our listeners know this, but we always like to kick this one off simply by diving deep into, you know, a bit of your personal journey, your, you know, hero's journey, the major rites of passage that you experienced that I guess really led you down this path, you know, that you're currently on. So what would you say, like some of the major key points of awakening or cataclysms that, you know, really transformed you? [Speaker 1] (4:12 - 8:02) Sure. I, so, I mean, going way back, I was, I was into Dungeons and Dragons when that first came out. And I think that was one of the, the things that kind of started me down this whole path. Dungeons and Dragons sort of like was this seamlessly showed up in my life is when I was really, really small. Like I didn't realize it had just came out. I was like probably too small to even understand the, the context of this. So role-playing games and, you know, all these classes of characters, the druids and the rangers and fighters and everything that really heavily influenced me because it was, it was sort of a look into, you know, to really, you know, take the roles of these very, very archetypal, you know, characters in a, in a, in a sense that, that was, you know, really liberating for me as a kid. It was, it was fascinating to like immerse myself in, in, in these narratives too, that were, you know, like Tolkien, very much like Tolkien. And I was also very much into Tolkien as a child and C.S. Lewis, you know, those were huge, formative authors for me. So, so I had a background of that. And then when I was 14, I went to, of all things, I went to the Soviet Union in 1984 as a, as a teenager. And that really blew my mind apart because I had no idea what I was getting into at the time, because it was, I happened to show up at a time when I believe it was Chernenko died. One of the, one of the leaders died. And it was, I saw a collectivist country, you know, you know, the late, very late Soviet Union when it was really falling apart. I mean, it was, it was insane. Like there was, they put us into a, into a hotel that was not for foreigners. And I, I spent the whole night listening to Russian, like people drunk and chasing each other around the hotel, which, you know, it's not, I grew up in a pretty stable house and that was not something that happened normally. And you know, they had bread lines and all of this. And I was like, you know, that was a very strong influence on me to see what, how radically different, you know, a country would be in, in this, in a different political form, you know, people just crazy, just like, and nothing made sense. So that was, that was, you know, significant, you know, write a passage for me. And then in my early 20s, I came upon, I came upon Tai Chi and Qigong and the, the, the, the teachings of Master Chia, Mantok Chia. If people are familiar with Mantok Chia, he's, he does the, it's like sexual retention, cultivating personal energy through all these Qigong practices. So I started in my early 20s on that practice and that completely changed my life. That was an absolutely formative experience. I, I also, by my early 20s, I was, I was an avid, I was basically a pagan. I came out as a pagan. I realized I was a pagan, that this was not a, yes, indeed. I knew it from early on that I was, you know, I didn't fit into a Christian or any sort of mainstream religious context. And this, this was, you know, I saw it as being non-repressive, you know, it didn't have all this bizarre moralizing and occlusion of basic human instinct that, you know, I saw that potential in it essentially. [Speaker 3] (8:03 - 8:03) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (8:03 - 8:25) What, what, what is, what is it to be a pagan? What is paganism? Because I feel like, you know, this gets thrown around a lot, but for the general person, they don't even, they hear this word, there's all these preconditioned ideas of what, what is, what is a pagan, what is paganism? So I'm wondering if you can bring some clarity for us. Yeah, I feel like there's people that associate it with being a Satan, you know, and so it's like, obviously not that, so I would love to get more clarity. [Speaker 1] (8:26 - 12:07) Yeah, that's kind of one of the, one of my, my crusades in life here is to, to, to rehabilitate the idea of paganism. There are a lot of committed pagans out there, you know, the, the Odinists, the people who are really into all sorts of heathenism, all, you know, there's all sorts of different types of paganism. So for me to, you know, I can only really speak for what I, what I believe and what I've, I've come to understand. It's, paganism is, you know, it is by nature polytheistic, you know, and even just saying the word polytheistic, you have to kind of define what that means, because it doesn't necessarily mean that all of these, well, let's back up a little, please. In polytheism, you have gods that are more like natural forces, forces of nature. They're not necessarily, well, they are personalities, they are archetypes, they are, you know, representative ideas of some things that are very basically true of human nature. So just to begin, my idea of paganism is archetypal. These, it's intrinsically meshed with a polytheistic pantheism, actually, which is, I'm going to start throwing around a lot of philosophical ideas, but these are all very much entwined in what I see really ancient ancient thought to be. It is by nature polytheistic. The gods are emanations of an earlier, shall we say, a more basic form of truth. Like in astrology, you have seven archetypal planets who are the gods, and they represent a full pantheon. They are the entirety of the year. They represent all of the archetypal forces that make up our reality. But behind them are more basic levels of creation, say, you know, the masculine and the feminine is kind of behind that. And each of the archetypes is a representation of masculinity or femininity to one extent or another. And there are combinations and gradations, but they're all functional within our reality. So paganism, not all pagans believe this. This is kind of where I've taken paganism in a philosophical sense. It is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and it is hard to really nail down what it is. There's late paganism, which I see as being like the late Roman Empire, where you have people who believe that the emperor was God, which would, I believe, be something that early pagans, you know, earlier Roman Empire, Greek, they would not believe that the emperor could be God. And it's sort of the statist paganism that came about with the late Roman Empire and late Greek that gives us a lot of the ideas we have about paganism now. What I'm looking at is a more true earth-based paganism that doesn't, that doesn't, you know, it's not inflected with all of this statism that you get in later paganism. So I hope that's not too wordy of an answer. [Speaker 2] (12:08 - 12:25) No, not at all. Thanks for that background, because again, you hear these terms all over the place. And unless a person has, you know, explored them more deeply, they don't really have an understanding of them. So if we talk about the Greek gods, you know, where would they fall in this, you know, in this realm? [Speaker 1] (12:26 - 13:50) So the Greek gods, all the gods in ancient times, the philosophers and the astrologers and the mathematicians, they're all the same people. And they're also the priests. They were, they would consider the Greek gods as being like, they were the archetypes. They were the archetypal representations of human nature, shall we say, which is why they're depicted as humans in, you know, in the literature. Their behavior is typological. It's archetypal. It tends to come out of us. It is us at a very basic level. The Greek gods, as I said, it's a pantheon. And when I, when I use the term pantheon, it's a pantheon is sort of like a, it's like the rainbow sort of, it's like all the colors of the rainbow, they can mesh together, they influence each other, they're functional. They're functional within reality that they make reality move forward, just like characters in a story. You need different type, you know, different characters to move a story forward or else, you know, your story gets very stagnant. So there's a very functional nature to these gods. They are forces of nature that literally move reality forwards. [Speaker 2] (13:51 - 15:20) Yeah. And ultimately they represent aspects of one's own psyche as well, right? Precisely. And so, for example, we have like 70% of the world population locked into this ideal, this notion of a, of a singular God. And mind you, I completely agree with you that all the gods are archetype. When you, when you think there's just a singular way of being, then, you know, that's highly repressive in nature. But when you come to understand that the entire pantheon of gods also represent parts of you, you know, attitudes, ways of being, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, then you can actually use that external information to mirror back, you know, what, what, what is it within me and the wideness and the vastness of who I actually am as a human being as well. Yeah. I, I, I think I mentioned this, these two books in the last interview we had with, with Michael, with Michael Tesarian, by Jungian analysts, gods in every man and goddesses in every woman. And those books had an impact on me because like Joel said, they ref, they reflect different elements of yourself. And so what does wholeness mean? It's like integrating the gifts of these different gods and what they, what they represented. There was something else I wanted. Oh, I wanted to say like, you would think, and again, I don't know his, what he was religiously, but like, when I think of Jung, like, I would think he was like a pagan, but I don't, I don't know like what his, what his beliefs were, you know, cause he was, loved archetypes and he loved nature. So I'd be curious if you had any insight on that. [Speaker 1] (15:21 - 19:39) Yeah. I don't know what his actual beliefs were. I, I do. I, I believe that, you know certainly Freud and Jung and a lot of the other people in that in the, the early psychological, you know, the founders of modern psychology, they are so influenced by, by ancient thought. I mean, it's, it's just so obvious. Like Freud was his, Freud's first love was actually Egyptology, you know, that was what he, he really loved. And I mean, there's, there's no question that, you know, the, the naming of all of the, you know, the electro complex, the Oedipus, Oedipal complex, these are all, there's no, I mean, you can't hide that. These are, these are, these are coming out of Greek mythology. And the, what it points to is even though the, you know, the term psychology is a relatively, you know, modern term and the field of study certainly is. The, the psyche of course is not anything new and we've known, you know, ancient people knew very much about it. And I believe that if you look into the language of ancient peoples, I don't know if you're familiar with like Jeremy Narby is one person whose book, The Cosmic Serpent, he taught, he spent a lot of time in the, in the Amazon working with shaman. And he, he talks a lot about how the language has multiple meanings for every word. You would get like, you know, something that means snake also means like, you know, a bunch of other things. And it's this, you start to realize that metaphor is, is really the basis of these languages. It's, you have to not understand context and you have to be willing to look into different possible ideas to even interpret anything that, that you know, people who are in, in indigenous cultures say, you know, they're, they're, they're, we're, we're, we're moving, we move towards the literal, which is a, you know, the monotheistic, again, it's like, like a monotheistic type of mindset where everything has one meaning, where everything is kind of locked into one possibility. In my book, I talk a lot about the Kennings and other ideas of like Norse and Old English. There were, Kennings or Haiti, these are terms that describe riddles or jokes that are like hidden within the language that you have to understand the, sort of a larger context of, of possibilities. So when you, when you speak about something, you're also speaking about something else. So you could be talking about like, you know, virtually anything and have a subcontext going on in what you're saying. And some of the people will get it and some people won't. And this is very much true of like, if you look at, I don't know if you're familiar with Joseph Atwell, who wrote, God, the book's name is escaping me, but it's, he basically exposed that the Bible was, was hiding several stories that were, that show that when, in many cases, the stories about Jesus doing his, his, his teachings, they were actually hiding the story of the Flavians coming in and routing the Jews in the, the Jewish revolt. So there's, there's a whole subtext underneath that, that if, unless you know that there's two stories being told at the same time, you're, you're going to be really like locked into this literal one, which is of Jesus doing his teachings. And the work of Ralph Ellis also does it, he does a great job of, you know, exposing that there's, there's multiple meanings in the Bible. There's, there's, you know, there's all these different things going on that you have to be kind of, really clued in with sort of a, a set of, of keys that can interpret, used to interpret things. And that's, that's how the entirety of, of ancient thought is. [Speaker 2] (19:39 - 20:01) Yeah, it's, it's, it's very right brain activated, which, which essentially is something which is, you know, quite missing. And I guess in today's modern society, modern culture, you know, with all these images being hijacked, you know, very much purely analytical thought that we, that we live under, so to speak, at the moment. [Speaker 1] (20:02 - 21:14) Right. Absolutely. Yeah. The, the, the left brain has, which is supposed to be the servant of the right brain has become the, the master, so to speak. And it's the, the metaphorical mindset has suffered greatly to the point where we've, people in Western culture have largely lost their sense of metaphor. And it's, that's one of the things about my book, I'm trying to reveal in my book, that astrology isn't just a, it's not just a divination form, it's actually hiding something else. It's hiding a story of the year, it's hiding a narrative of how archetypes actually interact with each other, and how the, these archetypes are associated with the seasons. They cannot be taken away from the seasons, that they, you need to have these archetypes to move the, the story of, of the year forward. And the typological year is also the story of human, human life going through its different stages. You know, you talk about the springtime of your life, the summer, the fall, the winter, these are all, you know, metaphors for going through our hero's journey, essentially. [Speaker 2] (21:15 - 21:34) Yeah. So just to kind of take it back, how did the understanding of these archetypes or the planets or the signs as archetypes and as having meaning come into place in the first place? Like, what was the initial relationship between Psyche and the sky, or in the stars and the planets that gave birth to this, you know, study? [Speaker 1] (21:36 - 25:00) So, that's a great question. There's, there's a ton in there. So, to really look at that, that's the ancient astrologers and astronomers were, they were the same people, again, as the philosophers. They were the same people as the priests. And they watched these, the wandering stars very carefully, and they looked at their, how they move, essentially. They looked at everything about them, their color, their brightness, their retrograde patterns, which is an extremely important thing. So, the wandering stars, with the exception of the sun and the moon, who always go forward, the wandering stars have this funny thing where they'll, when they get to a certain relationship with the sun, depending upon if they're an inner and outer planet, they will start to go backwards. They will stand still, and then they'll start to go backwards. So, these attributes, you know, speed, color, relative brightness, retrograde patterns, whether these retrograde patterns were even, or they seemed like more random, or like, you know, Venus's retrograde patterns are extremely harmonious. They, like, if you watch, if you look at the pattern over the course of several years, you can see it forms a pentagram. The actual, you can draw the lines between their, you know, Venus's motions. And Mars has a much more jagged and less harmonious appearing retrograde pattern. And he's also, you know, he's red. So, and Venus is just brilliant, the most brilliant, you know, star in the sky. And Mercury is darting around really fast, you know, right around the sun, sort of the servant of the sun. Then the, you know, and the outer planets are going much slower. And then Jupiter, you know, goes really relatively slow and is really very bright. And it's sort of like the sun of the night sky and very, it fits very nicely in its pattern. You know, it takes about a year for it to go around. So it's very orderly. And then Saturn is very slow moving, very dim and dark. And its retrograde patterns are, it has a very interesting pattern that it meets up with Jupiter over the course of very long periods of time, like 20 to 200 years. So all of their meetings will happen in the same, in signs of the same element. So there's, I mean, I'm giving you a lot of technical stuff here, but this is, these are the things that actually influenced the, how these archetypes being pegged to different archetypal, you know, ideas. It's all about brightness of lights, speed, retrograde patterns, how long they go fast, you know, how fast they are, when they stop, when they go backwards. So these are the things that basically brought about these archetypal ideas and how they got this language of metaphor became created. Does that help answer that? [Speaker 2] (25:00 - 25:32) Yeah, definitely. But what comes to mind immediately, which is fascinating for me, is like how now the physical attributes of the planets translate into the archetypal attributes of what they mean. For example, you know, Mercury being quick and fast, like I think about Mercury in Gemini, Saturn being slow moving. And, you know, I think about all the systems and all the very traditional ways of being like, that's an interesting correlation that the physical observations then kind of translated into what these, into fleshing out the archetypal meanings, I guess. [Speaker 1] (25:33 - 27:13) Precisely. That's exactly it. Yeah. And this was taken to the myth, the mythology too. If you look at the order of the outer planets, you find Saturn is the slowest moving, and there's sort of a dynastic movement within the mythology from Saturn, who actually had usurped Uranus, who's now the further out and invisible planet. And then Jupiter, or Zeus, mythologically usurps the rule of Saturn. And then we have Mars, who is sort of the usurper. So you can see it mythologically, there's sort of this dynastic pattern of these planets moving from the further out to the further in. And then the, it's very interesting how also we find the most orderly planets are actually the feminine, the ones who like are the most, the moon who is like completely, you know, interlinked with, you know, with feminine sex, you know, reproductive cycles. Venus is also like her period that she goes the same amount of time as the human gestation period. So you see that those two planets, I mean, the menstrual cycle and then the gestational cycle are directly linked to those two planets that are traditionally considered feminine. So that's fascinating as well. [Speaker 2] (27:13 - 27:33) So Michael, in your book at the beginning, I guess before it even starts in like, I don't know what you would call that opening, you have a quote, the God cannot ever truly love the goddess without understanding that she is and always will be a mystery. The God must love mystery as he loves himself. Can you extrapolate that and chat about that a little bit more? [Speaker 1] (27:34 - 28:51) Sure. Yeah. So in ancient thinking, there was, there's a sort of an agreement that the primordial principle is the feminine. And you get this in Taoism, in all sorts of traditions, that the, basically the creation was birthed from a woman, from the feminine principle. And that feminine principle is creation itself. It's embodied creation. This is a very much part of the astrological, how would you say, dogma, I guess, from ancient times that the world was birthed from female forces. And when I say female, it's the feminine, it's the primordial feminine. It's dark, it's cold, it doesn't move. It's versus the masculine, which is movement, which is life, which is expansion. The feminine is, for all of that, the darkness and such, it's also the generative principle, along with, which obviously requires the masculine. [Speaker 2] (28:52 - 29:06) Yeah. Archetypally, it's the sky itself, right? With the initial goddess, the darkness, the emptiness, the stillness. For those listening that might want a symbological cue, but also like deep ocean, like the deep, deep, deep waters. [Speaker 1] (29:09 - 32:16) Exactly. Yes. So the architectural planets, even though some of them are more feminine than masculine, they're all like fires in the sky. So that's the most basic metaphor here is the sky is this ocean, essentially. It's this generative ocean, and the archetypal planets are fires that are going across this ocean. So relatively speaking, the signs also are more feminine than the planets, because they are just their territory, but they have preferences. And there are things that, there are seeds of these archetypal planets that can be more easily planted in certain signs. And the reason that that's the case is because those signs relate directly to sections of the year. It's not the constellation so much, but it's the time of year that this, and each of these archetypal planets has a role within the year to move the year forward. So getting back to that quote, the traditional god like your Hermes, or Odin, or any number of other Mithras, these gods basically were gods of knowledge. They're who followed the goddess around, and you get this image of, like Odin would pursue Freyja, he pursued her knowledge, he wanted to understand her magic, essentially. And in traditional thought, all magic belongs to the feminine, essentially. So the god really needs to pursue her. This correlates also to the biological sciences, where we study, we follow, we look very carefully at the feminine, the creation itself, in order to unlock its mysteries. And part of the reason for that quote is that we don't ever really know. We don't really have to accept that creation itself will always have an aspect, a great aspect of mystery about it. And when we lose the understanding that creation itself is laden with mysteries, and it's also, this is why metaphor works so well, it's because there are multiple things going on, and you cannot ever leave your own consciousness at the door, so to speak. You always have to understand that your consciousness is trying to understand what's going on, but it will never fully be able to track what's going on. And it's got to love that fact of it being the mysterious aspects of creation that cannot be ever left, you know, we can't ever pretend that we've got all the answers. Does that answer the question? [Speaker 2] (32:16 - 32:49) Yeah, it does. Yeah, totally, man. Like, it's so, so, so intriguing. Like, there's just even, you know, the masculine part of me just wants to be able to concretely be able to grasp what's happening, how it happened, why it happened, how everything relates. And again, but again, that's, you know, the urge to follow the mystery, you know, which at the end of the day, I'm never going to get a concrete answer for. But, you know, we're going to get some ideas about it. So, for example, right now, you know, at the time of this recording, we're in cancer season. Like, how does that on a basic level directly impact a human being? [Speaker 1] (32:51 - 33:54) Yeah, cancer season is the time of trying to get your world to feel right for you, essentially. Cancer is the moon's territory. So, this is in ancient Egypt. The year started in cancer season with the flooding of the Nile. So, there's a good, you know, there's a good argument for this being the beginning of the year when we're starting to, you know, the sun has reached its pinnacle of its, you know, of its strength, essentially, at the solstice. And at this point, it's one of the reasons that cancer, you know, is ruled by the moon in traditional thinking, is that this is actually the beginning of the descent of the sun. This is when the, this is called the lunar half of the year, beginning at the solstice. So, we can get into a lot of things here. Yeah, there's two startings of the year, but go ahead. [Speaker 2] (33:55 - 34:18) Yeah, so, but now it's like the why, you know, is it because of the sun is now in cancer, it's like, like, there's a broad way in which this affects everyone. Like, what is the, what is the relationship as to why, you know, to me, it's obvious that this is, this is true. We are being affected by the movement of the planets and what's happening astrologically, but it's like, why? [Speaker 1] (34:19 - 35:31) Yeah, this is the, this is the height of fertility here. We're in the fertile half of the year right now. This is the fertile section of the year. This is the, the cancer season is right next to Leo season. And these are the, these two planets have a dyadic relationship for, for our reality. Essentially, these are, the moon is as close as you can get to a femininity personified. This is the moon is the embodiment itself. You know, this is the goddess's time when we feel our embodiment as strongly as we possibly can. We feel our feelings as much as we possibly can. It's traditionally in the northern hemisphere, this is, you know, this is a hot time of year. So, we're definitely feeling the, you know, our, our bodies, we're feeling a lot of the lunar aspects of our creation right now. So, that's how traditional people thought. It's really that basic. This is, this is fertility, what we're talking about. This is, this is the fertile year. [Speaker 2] (35:32 - 36:11) Yeah. You mentioned the why, and I'm curious because even from the human design standpoint, the whole concept of neutrinos, you know, that neutrinos are subatomic particles that are traveling through the universe near the speed of light, and they're taking on information and dropping off information, anything they pass through. So, depending on the transit, depending on what things are present in the sky, things are passing through, and then they pass through us. I don't know if that plays into it. Again, I'm so curious, again, what came first, you know, and how does, how do we impact the sky and vice versa? It's, it's fascinating to me, but that's, that's all I could think of in that regard. [Speaker 1] (36:12 - 38:05) Yeah, I think in traditional, you know, hermetic thought, consciousness comes first. You know, we've got mind as the first principle. So, neutrinos, that may be, that may be the case, you know, that may, that may be, but consciousness is always first. So, what exactly, if we, if we look for a materialistic sort of mechanism by which things happen, we can potentially lose, we lose consciousness, we lose the role of consciousness in that. You know, it's, we want to be careful. I mean, there may be some actual physical mechanism by which things are moving things around. That's certainly possible, but it's... I agree. Yeah, it makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah, that's, hermeticism puts, puts consciousness first. You know, everything is mind, you know, everything is mind. So, mind is, you know, we are observing ourselves, and through our observation, we're also creating, you know, our reality. So, the closer we can get to, you know, natural law, which is, you know, the law of how things really work, the more, you know, we will live in, you know, in some sort of harmony with, with nature, and also with the understanding that we never will actually get harmony. That this is a, that the universe moves forward through the interact, the generative interaction of two opposite forces, the masculine and feminine, and they don't, if we, if we ever get harmony, if we ever, this is where people who want to go back to the womb, we get to this, you know, this idea of like, you know, we just want everything to harmonize, we want, you know, our science to tell us how everything works. And then we just, you know, everything will be just fine, and we're living in some sort of utopia. [Speaker 2] (38:06 - 38:30) You don't get, you don't get growth without friction, you don't get evolution without friction, you know, the urge for fucking harmony, you're right, is the urge to return back to the womb, you know, to have complete stillness, to have just be cared for, nurtured, comforted, convenient all the time, but you don't get growth in that, you know, and so this principle of friction is built into nature, like in many ways, disharmony is nature, right? [Speaker 1] (38:31 - 39:34) Absolutely, absolutely, yes, yeah, the, the, so one of the things that I talk about in my book is the, the, the nature of these, if people are familiar with what are called the malefic planets in, in traditional astrology, these are the planets of Mars and Saturn, and there's, just to back up a little bit more, there's this thing called the doctrine of sects in ancient astrology, which divides the planets into two, into two sections, essentially. We have the, the, the, the feminine sect, which is made up of the Moon and Venus and Mars, and then we have the, the masculine sect, which is made up of the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn, so each of these sects has a, a malefic planet in it, and if you look at the, the functions of these planets, you, you see that their actual functions, it, function is to, to cause problems within that group, essentially, to, to limit that group. [Speaker 2] (39:35 - 39:35) Wow. [Speaker 1] (39:35 - 40:03) Mars breaks up and individuates, Mars causes heat, Mars causes friction, Mars is the, the force that disturbs the harmony of the feminine when it becomes too cold, too dark, and too solid. He breaks things up, and for that reason, he's considered malefic. Now, malefic doesn't mean evil. This is a force of nature that comes through in order to re, re, re get, regain balance. [Speaker 2] (40:04 - 40:04) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (40:04 - 41:01) And if you look at the masculine sect, you have, you have the Sun and Jupiter and Saturn. Now, Saturn does the same function within this, with this sect. This is the masculine sect. It's all about light and expansion and trying to, you know, have a rational understanding of the world. What does Saturn do? Saturn is, mythologically, he castrated Uranus, who was the sky god. He's all about cold and dark and a limitation and becoming solid again. He's about death. So what does Saturn do? Saturn emasculates the Sun, Saturn emasculates the, the, the masculine principle, and he sits there in the, in this, the masculine sect. So each of these planets actually serves to break up and to destroy their, their, their relative, you know, their, their sect, which is, you know, it's just a fascinating idea. [Speaker 2] (41:01 - 41:27) Yeah. And but he's, he's so needed, like, he, he clips the wings of Icarus. So, so, so, so to speak, right? Like, you can't grow too quickly. There has to be constraint. There has to be some kind of order here, mate. You know, these forces are all absolutely necessary. So just to go back a bit, so you would say Mars is a masculine planet, but it's in a female sect, is that, or it's in a feminine sect, is that right? That is correct. [Speaker 1] (41:27 - 44:17) Yes. And Saturn is actually, if you look at the mythology of Saturn, Saturn was going back to the very cosmological creation story of Greek mythology. We have, you have Gaia and Uranus were the two primordial gods, and Gaia represented all of femininity, and Uranus represented masculinity, and Uranus arose from Gaia as her child, and then they mated after that. And their first two groups of, of human-like creations were these giants, who were called something like the Hecatoncheires, and these, these were, they were described as being 50-headed and having 100 hands each, which tells me that they were more like moving in, like, they were more like beings moving in quorum sensing. They were like, like they would all move together, you know, in a batch. I think that's what a metaphor for, like, like people who were not individuated, who did not have individual consciousness, and they were making a mess, apparently, of the Earth at this early time. They were, there's other mythologies that describe a similar set of giants, so we can be talking about the Nephilim here, possibly, you know, some other, you know, correlates early human-like beings. So Uranus found that these, these giants were destroying, they were actually destroying Gaia, they were causing problems for her, so he cast them into Tartarus, which again is very much like the Nephilim being cast underground, but Gaia was upset because these were her children being cast underground, so she enlisted Saturn to castrate Uranus. So Saturn is in this position of being like a mama's boy, essentially, he's like doing, he's a male, but he's doing the, the bidding of his mother. So you can, you can see the, the immediate psychological problems with the Saturn role, so this is, my book talks about that a lot. Saturn basically represents a lot of the, the very negative and destructive side of the feminine, but it's conveniently hiding behind a masculine face, so the, this masculine figure is doing the bidding of the goddess, so she doesn't have to look at herself to see that it's actually her destructive tendencies that have come, it's, she's got a masculine face to put, you know, to blame essentially here, so this, this is a very fascinating, you know, reflection of, of human interaction. [Speaker 2] (44:18 - 44:26) Yeah, well it brings forth this idea of like, yeah, the heart and the arm and the mama's boy doing the bidding of the narcissistic, terrible mother. Exactly. [Speaker 1] (44:26 - 45:48) Yeah. Precisely, so this goes back into the very beginning of human consciousness, this, you know, the terrible mother, you know, essentially just destroying her son and turning him into a, you know, a, what I think Sarian would call like the chivalric male, perhaps, in a, in a very, very dark sense, who's just trying to appease his mother. So that's, you know, that, that's part of the psychology I found, I find, you know, deeply hidden within astrology, that this, this sort of, this truth, and, and again, behind what we call patriarchy, there's often a very dark matriarchal force that's going on that nobody sees, that nobody is aware of, and it's a force for collectivism much more than the masculine patriarchal force, which tends to want to individuate, tends to want to be more logical and build things versus the feminine, which is more about feeling and cycles. And again, this isn't misogynist, this is, these are just very basic, this is how hermeticism divided up the, the, the forces of masculinity and femininity. So what you're saying is that the planets don't have pronouns? [Speaker 2] (45:49 - 46:05) They do not, no. Thanks, thanks for clarifying. So where does, where does Pluto come into the picture for you? I know you mentioned there's, for you, it's seven primary planets or archetypes. Do you work with Pluto at all in your understanding or? [Speaker 1] (46:06 - 47:51) I do absolutely work with Pluto. I work with Pluto as being a reflection of the superego, of the things about us that are submerged, that we cannot, we do not, do not want to or cannot see. Pluto is the god of the underworld traditionally, so he is this, the things that we shove underneath societally, that we don't want to look at, which is ironically, Pluto, you know, this is a, it's a male god, again a male god, but he's, he's representing the underworld, which traditionally in virtually every culture you have feminine gods who represent the, the underworld, and Pluto was, you know, Pluto was the abductor of Persephone. He brought Persephone into the underworld, where she actually ironically took power, but she took power by examining the world of the masculine, essentially, by becoming familiar with the world of the masculine, and so Pluto is a very complicated planet, and I look at Pluto in a chart as being the, representing the things in the subconscious that the person is going to have a hard time looking at, but Pluto also represents a great deal of potential for us to to find the hidden gold, to find things that are, you know, that we need to mine for in our own psyche, and we're transformed by that, you know, and I think what I, you know, my understanding of Pluto is probably not too far off from other astrologers, you know, in the modern world, but I, I root it very deeply in, in the archetype of, of Pluto and in mythology. Oh man, what? [Speaker 2] (47:52 - 48:16) No, you can go if you were going to say something. I was going to say it sounds like he summated my life path pretty well in describing Pluto just then. For sure. What inspired you to write your book? Like, what's the state of conventional astrology? What have you learned? What gets left out for, in regards to most astrologers? Like, like, what's, what's your gift to the astrological world, you know, like? [Speaker 1] (48:18 - 53:55) Um, so, um, my, my approach to astrology is as a, as a somebody who's trying to re-vivify paganism. I'm extremely, um, sympathetic to, uh, ancient thought patterns that I think over the course of the last 2,000, actually maybe even 3,000 years, have fallen out of favor. Um, so I bring a great deal of sympathy and, um, desire to understand what, uh, traditional peoples were actually getting at. Um, I think a lot of, um, modern astrologers are maybe happy to kind of leave the, um, the polarity stuff at the door in a way to like, to, to just, um, uh, not bring in the, the more archetypal ideas of masculinity and femininity that I, you know, that I very much, um, embrace that I think are very liberating for astrologers and anybody who wants to, uh, you know, live in a, um, and accepts their, their, their, their masculine and feminine sides. Um, and when I do astrological readings, I'm, I very much couch things in these terms, and I'm constantly reminding, you know, clients that, that's, uh, these are, these are how these, these archetypal forces work, masculine and femininity, according to ancient thought. Um, and to use these ideas to the, to your advantage, don't run away from them, you know, embrace them. And, you know, um, that's what my book really is. It's an attempt to, uh, reframe the, um, uh, feminine archetypes as being distinct, the masculine archetypes as being distinct, um, them being functional with each other. So that my book is, is, is really an examination of, uh, Venus's relationship with Mercury, because in Venus and Virgo, Virgo is ruled by Mercury, and Venus falls in, um, in Virgo in traditional astrology, meaning that she's got this, she has a hard time in Virgo. So the book is an exploration of, of what is it about the mercurial archetype when this, um, you know, this is the, the life scientist, this is the businessman, this is the guy who Mercury wants to, um, take the fruits of the earth and to make the best use of them to, uh, you know, animal husbandry, um, agriculture, uh, life sciences, uh, business. These are the things that Mercury represents. And in Virgo, Virgo is the season traditionally when things have become, um, when there's abundance, when we're, we're harvesting things. And the goddess herself represents the things that we're harvesting. She represents the fruits of the earth. She is the fruits of the earth. And if you look at the, um, like the Orphic hymns, you'll, you, they say quite distinctly that, um, that, uh, Venus, like all the products of the earth come from Venus. What does that tell us? That, you know, that she is bounty itself metaphorically. So Mercury is trying to, you know, enhance the harvest. He's trying to bring out as much abundance as he possibly can. He's also trying to preserve it, sell it, you know, popularize it in Gemini. He's trying to, um, you know, announce to the world, all the incredible fruits of the earth that are coming out. And then in Virgo, he is like, these, these fruits have come to fruition. We need to, uh, ferment them. We need to store them. We need to like, look at the ones that may have, you know, a bite from a bug or, you know, something that we can't sell it and we do something else with it. So it's, is Virgo is the season when things are embodied. It's is, uh, the, um, life force itself is come up and is present with us in its, you know, in its most abundant form. Um, and ironically, the goddess actually is like, you know, this is when she's being examined so closely she's, she's being looked at like the fruit is being checked. It's, you know, and if it's not good, it's being thrown away. It's, you know, if it's good, you know, we celebrate it. So, um, she actually has a hard time with that because she's being looked at so closely. Her body is being looked at so closely, you know, like, um, who wants to be looked at that closely? You know, who wants to be examined that closely? It's kind of be better to be, you know, sort of in the imagination, but in Virgo, she's, she's all there. She's all flesh. Whereas in the opposite sign of Pisces, it's all imagination. It's all about us imagining what's coming in the season. You know, Pisces comes, you know, it's a sign that comes right before the, um, uh, the spring equinox. So we're done with winter in spring, you know, in Pisces season, we're just looking forward to the, um, the beautiful goddess coming and, uh, giving us her, her fruits again. So whenever you look at any sign, you have to look at the opposite sign in order to understand the polarity. So, you know, Pisces is largely among all astrologers, you know, considered to be the, um, you know, it's the home of imagination. It's the home of, uh, the, our, um, most detached from reality, essentially where we're, um, you know, we've been through a hard winter, um, and we're just really, you know, we're tired and, you know, we're really looking forward to spring. [Speaker 2] (53:55 - 53:57) I see Pisces is five days. [Speaker 1] (54:00 - 54:23) Yeah, Pisces is, I'm, I have a Pisces moon, so I'm not, you know, I have no way of, uh, um, a problem with Pisces, but I, it's, it's one of the most, um, you know, it's, it's, it's not, it tends to be, to have a hard time with reality to a certain extent, you know, or it can anyway, it has that potential, um, but it fits in with the seasons, you know, and it makes sense, you know. [Speaker 2] (54:23 - 54:53) Yeah, I've got a Pisces ascendant. Excellent. Um, all right. So in your opinion, how can someone really, practically work with astrology to enhance the quality of their lives? What is the first step for an individual to be like, okay, I want to use this system of knowledge to make things easier for myself? What do I do now? [Speaker 1] (54:55 - 57:24) Sure. Yeah. I mean, um, you can get a reading for sure. Go to somebody for a reading and you can, um, beyond, beyond, beyond individual charts. Yeah. Beyond individual charts. Okay. So if you want to use astrology as a, um, a way to, um, enhance your life in general, um, I, I mean, I believe that the archetypes to really get into the archetypes and examine the archetypes is the, is the beginning of that. Um, I think, you know, an archetypal understanding of one's own psychology to, because we can all, we all have martial moments, especially as men, we, you know, we are moments when we're, you know, where our, our, our fuse is short, you know, when we're like, we want to move things quickly. Um, we want to get things done, you know? Um, we need to, uh, you know, examine how Mars expresses in ourselves. If we can take the time to really look at our patterns where we want to break up the feminine, we want to like, you know, do the things that Mars does, which is, you know, to, um, to, to, to, to create Mars is extremely creative. You know, he gets a very bad rap for, um, you know, for, he's considered the God of, uh, God of war, but the war that he's in is really the, um, the, the battle of the sexes. And that's a function that has to be, you know, as part of, uh, part of nature, it's not something that we can walk away from. And our, our current, um, uh, political and cultural climate has really no time for masculinity. It's, it very much wants to submerge the masculine. And, um, in my book, I talk about how, you know, I, I disagree with associating only, um, Pluto to the sign of Scorpio because Mars has a very strong connection to Scorpio. Um, it's not just a planet that's, you know, if we go back to what I was talking about, how the planets, their, their motion and their, um, their visibility and such are part of what defines the archetype. Pluto is a planet that's at the very edge of the solar system. So, uh, if we want to throw masculinity out to the edge of the solar system where we can't see it, where it moves super slow and we can demote it to a dwarf planet, like do all these things, you know, those are not mistakes. You know, they masculinity is something that's being swept under the rug. So you can see it within astrology itself. [Speaker 2] (57:24 - 57:46) I mean, particularly, like if you make the correlation of masculinity, it's objectivity. Like we live in a society right now that is completely subjective. Like they want to make nothing seem black and white, nothing seem rational. The lines are blurred, every single aspect of reality that we look in. And this speaks to, you know, that banishment of masculinity from current culture. [Speaker 1] (57:47 - 59:54) Exactly. And we were in, um, uh, a 14 year period when Neptune is in Pisces and this sort of, um, uh, escape from reality, this attempt to, you know, uh, just make everything completely subjective and delusion, you know, uh, there's, there's benefits from this time too. We can go into it and be super creative. We can allow ourselves to really look at, um, uh, our own story and recreate it, you know, but we have, we have to then root that reality. We can't just pretend, we can't just, you know, call herself a cat or, you know, choose a new pronoun or whatever. And then all of a sudden we're a different human and we're happy that, that does, that doesn't work that way. So astrology is very much rooted in, in, in reality, as far as I'm concerned, it's very much rooted in the seasons. It's rooted in archetypes that are immutable, essentially. Their edges are very, can be blurry, you know, the edges between the moon and Venus, the edges between Venus and Saturn, you know, these are, they're not always distinct, but you can, you can certainly get a, um, a very strong idea, you know, and start looking at yourself in these ways once you really sit with these archetypes. And I personally, I spent, um, many years actually meditating every morning on each day of the week, I would read the Orphic hymn for the proper planet. So Sunday I would look at the Orphic hymn for the sun, Monday for the moon, Tuesday for Mars, Wednesday for Mercury, Thursday for Jupiter, you know, Friday for Venus and Saturday for Saturn. Um, and I would just, you know, meditate upon these, um, these archetypes. And I actually got to know these forces within myself. And then I looked at my chart and started to really recognize how these forces were being, um, um, uh, either consciously or unconsciously influencing my life in ways, um, that I then was able to, uh, really take a much better hold of. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (59:54 - 1:01:10) The, you know, something I'm super grateful to Michael to Saren for was, his incredible work in bridging the Tarot to astrology, because studying the Tarot archetypes, you know, particularly the ones that are relative to certain signs can really help you, um, you know, dive into what these archetypes really mean. Um, also, and I highly recommend, you know, Tarot Scopes Mystery School to anyone that wants to dive further into that also. That's, I mean, that's what it comes down to, right? Understanding like these archetypes, like all these human traits, all these human characterologies, right? It's there for us to really ponder, for us to really reflect upon, for us to really know ourselves through. And so like, you know, so those that kind of want to discount astrology and discount these archetypes and, you know, kind of cut away from them, it's like you're doing the ultimate disservice to yourself, to humanity, to society. And again, the entire distortion of the archetypes is happening now through modern media as well, particularly with the children coming through. It's really, really important that we honor the sacredness of these images, of these meanings, of this symbology, of these metaphors, and really, you know, stake our flag in the ground with them. [Speaker 1] (1:01:11 - 1:02:07) Right, absolutely. Yeah, the, uh, Michael Sarian and I've spoken about it, like the archetypal drift that we're getting, where the archetypes are, have lost their foothold, you know, it's very interesting that they, they can shift over time and our understanding of them can become actually over the course of, um, of history. And that's something that social engineering does. It's certainly, it's working with these archetypes through all the media to suppress them, to, um, to blur our understanding of them or to, uh, provide, you know, like action adventure movies where we take on, you know, vicariously take on these, um, these archetypes. So we then don't in our own life, you know, that it's sort of the, uh, a vicarious, um, situation where we, we really should be embodying the, the, the hero more, whereas we allow, you know, our movies to do it for us. [Speaker 2] (1:02:08 - 1:02:20) Yeah. Would you say that's like a, that's a very like, kind of a query and a concept that now these things through media, through technology are going to be distorted in the way and kind of drift away from their tradition? [Speaker 1] (1:02:21 - 1:04:45) Potentially. Yes. Yes. The, um, Aquarius is traditionally, um, uh, ruled by Saturn. So Aquarius is the, uh, is the sign of, um, Saturn in his more social, um, uh, aspect where he's dealing with, um, the group he's dealing with the collective, um, but it's about controlling the collective, uh, Aquarius season every year is in the winter. So in the winter time, the, um, we're all, you know, in the Northern hemisphere, traditionally we would be indoors. So we would be all together. And in the winter time, you don't, you know, you don't raise your voice inside, you get your indoor inside voice, you know, you, you don't, um, you don't make waves, you don't cause problems for people, you know, you kind of like step in line. That's, that's a winter thing for, uh, for humans. So Aquarius is very much about the hive, the group, the, um, the collective. It's about our relationship to the collective. So it can be positive. And again, it can be negative. We can use that, uh, that focus in order to, uh, renegotiate our, um, our connection to the group to expose problems with the group to, um, you know, to even break away and make a new group and then, you know, have higher standards for where individuality is more highly, um, you know, uh, prized in our new group, you know, you know, we, we, the Aquarius is all about examining that. So yes, it's definitely the time, um, this, the age of Aquarius, there's no mistake. That's, um, the last three years, this whole like, um, uh, coup d'etat that happened. This is part of the attempt to seize the reins of the new age of Aquarius by these social engineers. They're attempting to set the, um, the new paradigm, you know, the, uh, great resets these, all of these, you know, horrific ideas, you know, that they're trying to enforce, which are collectivist, which are, uh, really anti-human, uh, that's very, you know, uh, Aquarius can very much drift away from what it means to be human and try and focus so much on this, uh, an idealized, uh, utopian, um, paradigm that they, you know, the, it becomes very ugly, very quickly. [Speaker 2] (1:04:46 - 1:04:54) So, so would you say like the social engineers are trying to force the lower side of Aquarius through more? Absolutely. [Speaker 1] (1:04:54 - 1:05:46) They're trying to occlude the, um, the, the positive side of Aquarius, which is censorship, essentially all the censorship that's going on, all of the, um, uh, attempts to force things into the lowest common denominator, you know, of, uh, the, the, the, the fattest, the stupidest, the, you know, all of the unfortunate things that, you know, where the, the idiocracy, um, idiocracy or however you want to describe it, the, uh, the, the trying to make it so that people who have the, the, the least creativity make the essentially, you know, there's room for everybody, but, you know, when we, um, when we, uh, really don't make room for creativity and individuality, we're in, we're in deep trouble. And Aquarius is a time where you would, you could do that. And that's, they know that they know that this is a time to do that. [Speaker 2] (1:05:47 - 1:06:18) Yeah, man. Um, so something came up for me. So it seems as though like these archetypes or these planetary archetypes are very much so formed based on the seasons of the Northern Hemisphere, right? So is this just an indication that, you know, early civilization was kind of born in the North because that's where these archetypes came from? And like, how would this affect or implicate individuals living in the Southern Hemisphere? [Speaker 1] (1:06:20 - 1:08:55) That is a great question. So you just hit on this. So this actually, that is true. So by, by most, um, I'm one of a very few people who actually recommends flipping the Zodiac over into, at least for the dignities of the planets during, um, you know, because in the Southern Hemisphere, you're going to have Saturn ruling the summer and Saturn is really irrelevant during the summer. Mars is not relevant during Libra season. You know, these are like, these are not you know, the moon does not rule the winter. That's the moon is about generative fertility. The sun is about, you know, uh, also about fertility. And so there are astrologers out there who do this to actually flip the Zodiac over, which is you get into problems there because people assume that the, um, you know, we have the constellations are actually, um, you know, then your constellations are all messed up, but yes, but then you, if you don't, your archetypes are all messed up. So like, um, there's, yeah, it makes total sense that, I mean, ancient people knew that there were at least 48 constellations in the sky. So if you're going to go to just 12 of those constellations and say that these are the divine defining constellations for all of everything that's happening on earth, which is essentially what you have to, you know, if you, for astrology to work, I don't believe that that was what ancient people meant. I think they understood that this was tropical because I mean, if you look at like the Celtic cross, the cross that's used in, um, even in Christianity, that is that cross represents the solstice and solstices and equinoxes. That's what the cross is. It's not anything else. I mean, that it later became, you know, the, uh, the crucifixion, but that, that, that cross, you know, was, was, um, taken from much earlier cultures. And it's because the year is sacred. The year is sacred to people. And the, um, the, the, the solstices and the equinoxes are, I mean, look at all of the, um, the ancient, um, you know, megalithic, uh, sites that, you know, one time during the year, you can see the sun coming through and that's the, you know, that's the solstice or the equinox. These things were sacred to people. These are, you know, that you can't, I can't accept that it was all about the constellations. I mean, there are people who have tried to make that the case. They did understand the constellations. They did have stories for the constellations, but that's not what this was. Yeah. This is about the ecliptic. And so these signs meant something much bigger than simply just the, the constellation. [Speaker 2] (1:08:56 - 1:09:09) Yeah. So in your opinion, would this affect like the way that people view their individual charts if they're born in the It's worth it to look, I would say. [Speaker 1] (1:09:09 - 1:10:12) Yes. But so the thing that's interesting is because each of these, um, signs is on a, um, an axis. So the opposite is going to have a lot of the same, uh, meanings. It's just flipped. You know what I'm saying? So cancer has a lot of the same, you know, cancer and Capricorn are in locked in this sort of, um, uh, in a non-negotiable opposition and they're, they're dealing with the same thing, but one is dealing with the fertile half of it and the other is dealing with the infertile half of it. So you can get some of the same ideas. So, um, but yes, I do recommend that people in the Southern hemisphere actually have a look at that. Um, I do know people in the Southern hemisphere who, um, have, are Libras who are be like, I'm not a Libra. I'm a Aries. I don't understand. Like, and I, until I realized that I, you know, I could flip this over that this was, you know, that there's actually, um, there's some more meaning for some people. I'm not going to say that's for everybody, but it's something that's worth looking at for sure. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:10:13 - 1:10:48) It's, it's, it's very, very, very interesting because I came, I came across this kind of accidentally because traditionally, like I'm, I'm born in Sydney. My son's sign is Scorpio, but when I ventured into Michael's work with telescopic astrology, he places the more emphasis on your telescopic ascendance. I'm not going to get into how that's calculated now, but it turned out my ascendant in that system was Taurus, which just so happens to be opposite Scorpio. When I began to identify and really bring in the archetypal meaning of Taurus, I got much more deeper understanding of myself. [Speaker 1] (1:10:50 - 1:11:34) Yes. Yeah. That's, that's great. I love how Michael's system does that. It's very important that brings that out, that, that basic fact of the, the importance of the, um, that, uh, in, in traditional astrology, it'd be called the seventh house, the opposite sign. And every, every sign sits on an axis and it's really important. You'll never understand your son's sign unless you actually go and look at the opposite sign and then start to, you know, and then from there to look at the ruler of your own sign and start to try and understand how and why that archetype is so associated with that season. What is it about that season that needs this archetype to, um, to essentially shepherd it forward? Does that make sense? [Speaker 2] (1:11:34 - 1:11:35) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:11:38 - 1:11:43) You're a what, sorry? I'm a quadruple Aries myself. I have four, four planets plus the North node in Aries. [Speaker 2] (1:11:44 - 1:11:44) Oh, wow. [Speaker 1] (1:11:45 - 1:12:06) I had to look at Aries. I'll do from the opposite sign. You know, you can look at, you can just focus on what Aries means, but until you start to look at Libra, you know, then you can, you're going to start getting some real, cause then you get the contrast, you get the, you know, what it doesn't mean. You know what I'm saying? So it's very important to understand these as axes, axes, axes. [Speaker 2] (1:12:07 - 1:12:30) Exactly. It's two sides of an axle. Like you're not going to, you can't, you can't separate them. They need each other. They're dependent on each other. And so then if we consider, you know, that these sun signs actually do fall in the seventh house, you know, could the argument be made that that's more so how you're going to be in relationship than, than anything else? You know, if the seventh house being Libra kind of does rule relationships. [Speaker 1] (1:12:31 - 1:13:15) Yeah, exactly. Yep. You're going to find, yep. You're going to find that, that, that whatever the opposite sign is going to really impact your relationships and that, that you can't understate the importance of that. You know, that's extremely important for us. And if you, if you know your ascendant too, to understand your ascendant axis. So like, if you're a Pisces ascendant, then you got to look at Virgo. Like Virgo is going to have a, you know, that whole axis and then understanding like what, as I said, you know, Virgo is, is all about things being embodied things, you know, abundance is when we have everything. So it's like that whole axis of, you know, before anything's even arrived before life has even come up in the Northern hemisphere versus when everything's here, that's the continent. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:13:15 - 1:13:24) So like when it comes to the ascendant, should that always be what's opposite the sun? Because obviously in Western astrology, it's not by any means. It's not. Yes. [Speaker 1] (1:13:25 - 1:13:43) So, I mean, I do believe that, you know, if you, if you look back in history, I think people could actually determine their ascendants fairly well. I would, I'd say that there was, if you look into like ancient astrological texts, you'll find that they always spoke about the ascendant and I don't. [Speaker 2] (1:13:44 - 1:13:45) But they never had charts or compasses or computers. [Speaker 1] (1:13:46 - 1:15:10) Yeah. Without that, all you need to know is where the sun was basically in the sky. At that time, you'll know, if you know, which sign was, you know, was the sun is in as it's rising, which is your sun sign. And, you know, if it was noon, then you know, that it's, you know, if you're in Aries, it's going to be in, in cancer. So you got to like, you know, you can figure it out and you can then, you know, even if you don't have it exactly right, if you, if you're an astrologer and you know these archetypes, you can like start to look at the person and make an assessment of what, of what the, what the likelihood is. And you also, you'd have to know about the, like Mercury is very important. So Mercury is always going to be fairly close to the sun. And Mercury tells you a lot about how you, you deal with your neighborhood, essentially, you know, it's like Mercury is extremely important determiner of like your, how you get along day to day, you know, how you look at the world. So you need to look at Mercury sign. So we're, we're all a big, you know, we have a big mash together of all these, these archetypes in different places. Like I'm a quadruple Aries, but I have Saturn in Aries, which completely changes everything because he's like very much not about Aries. He doesn't like Aries. So it's a very, you know, bit of a wet blanket on some of the Aries energy. So. [Speaker 2] (1:15:13 - 1:15:29) Yeah. Michael, what's, what's explaining a lot of the things that's going on in the world in terms of the scientism called, you see the rise of like wokeism, like from an archetypal, you know, planetary astrological standpoint. [Speaker 1] (1:15:31 - 1:19:56) So the outer planets like are really what I look at to a certain extent for this. And also the, there was a, just recently when, when the, the whole, just as the whole, you know, scandemic started, there was a 200 year shift of, of meetings of Saturn and Jupiter. And they started meeting in, in air signs for the first time in 200 years, they had been meeting in earth signs previously. So earth signs are generally, you know, earth era, 200 year periods are generally fairly stable. Lots of, you know, stable government, generally things build up, you know, it may not be particularly not necessarily the best but it's stable, you know, it's a good time to grow a civilization. You know, there's a lot of stuff, you know, it's like a lot of material things tend to build up like infrastructure. So that's a good thing. And it's what we've seen over the last 200 years, we've had a lot, you know, steady increase in technology. However, once the, the air sign, you know, once the, this, this era of air began, everything started to pretty much break apart. You know, there's this massive, it's an attempt to centralize, but there also is this massive decentralization of things, like a lot of our, like the United States appears to be losing its, you know, its place as, you know, the, the leader of the world, you know, that's a fairly, that's a significant thing. And that's timed with this, this entry into an air era. It's also, we're approaching the, you know, the, as I said, the, the era of, of Aquarius, you know, in the great year. So people are going to be pushing towards that. We're also on a more granular level, you know, Neptune going into, is in Pisces still. So we're seeing a lot of this scientism, certainly that's Neptune in Pisces is, is, you know, that's going to speak to people, you know, really not being able to tell when they, you know, something that they should have faith in versus something that's actually objectively true. You get this confusion between the objective and the, and the subjective during these periods. The last time that Neptune was in Pisces was the 1840s through early 1860s, when you saw a lot of the move towards, what would you call it, like, more religious, it was like, it was a religious revival after a time when actually like religions actually almost went the way of, you know, they almost died out in the 19th century. There was very low interest in religion prior to that. And there's a lot of other things that happened during that time period where there was a move towards, you know, seances and, you know, all of the spiritualism. So, you know, we should expect that kind of thing now, a movement towards spirituality for better or worse. And we're also seeing obviously the, you know, science coming forth as a new religion. So there's several different levels of things, you know, Pluto going into Aquarius, that's very much about a move towards collectivism and attempt to, you know, really rule the collective consciousness in ways that it really should not be, you know, ruled, it should not be gathered up into this really dark, this dark Plutonian place, you know, central control. Does that answer your question? Those are some of the things that are going on. That definitely answers my question, man. [Speaker 2] (1:19:57 - 1:20:12) Curious. So how can people like take the energy of the period to, you know, really, I guess, move things in the opposite direction or move things towards, you know, a more higher state or a more evolved state, so to speak? [Speaker 1] (1:20:12 - 1:21:07) Yeah, I mean, I personally believe that, you know, getting back to these archetypal and archetypal understanding of, you know, masculinity and femininity is a great place to start and embracing these ideas as they are and not trying to create this transhumanist, you know, posthumanist idea that we need to get away from that immediately. And we need to focus back on nature. I mean, I know everybody says that, and that, you know, we hear that so much that it's, you know, sometimes, Michael, what does that actually mean? But it's, you know, spending time in nature, getting closer to natural law, studying natural law, getting, you know, natural law is the law above all humans, reorienting us towards, you know, the laws that come out of the observation of nature. That is certainly where I would begin. [Speaker 2] (1:21:08 - 1:21:37) Yeah, such an interesting phrase, like natural law, like it's something obviously that's gained a lot of popularity recently. So just to get clear, like when you say natural law, you mean like this hermetic principles in terms of, you know, that are known, because obviously, then there's been like a whole new extrapolation, which is still rooted in the principles, you know, through like Mark Passio's work and others of the ilk. So what is natural law to you, I guess, briefly? [Speaker 1] (1:21:39 - 1:22:56) Natural law comes from the observation of nature, basically. That's it. Yeah. It's that simple, that every, you know, the natural law is, we don't, we cannot, there is no human law that can trump the law of nature, we can come with, you know, agreements around things that we want to see in society, that's fine, but they're not binding in a way that the law of nature always will be. It's really that simple. As I said, you know, a return to a more pagan understanding of the world where we're not looking to government, we're looking more to the most basic, you know, a heathen understanding of the world is one that's based around the, you know, literally the heath, the place in the woods where you would go to, you to find, you know, yourself in nature. Humans must look first to nature and then look second to humans, towards other humans, you know, to determine how we should behave. We orient first to nature, orient second to each other based on what we've observed from nature. [Speaker 2] (1:22:58 - 1:23:18) Yeah. Michael, man, I've loved this conversation. It's been a fascinating conversation for myself. I'm sure very intriguing for our listeners too. Any final message that you might have at this point you're willing to share? And also how can people, I guess, find you, get in touch with you and, you know, really get involved in the kind of work that you're doing? [Speaker 1] (1:23:24 - 1:25:49) Sure. Well, I think we, you know, for all of the problems that we are facing right now, which are absolutely enormous, I don't want to understate them. I am optimistic, but I don't want to, you know, be Pollyannish about any of this. We are under a great threat right now, clearly. And the threat to, you know, to individual, to the individual is enormous. So I really believe that, you know, getting back to an archetypal understanding of ourselves, I really enjoyed the last show you had on characterology. I thought that was very dovetail with what we're talking about very, very nicely. I think that, you know, any way that we can look at ourselves in this archetypal fashion and understand that our psychology is natural, our psychology is of nature as well, that we're not, we're not, even the very thoughts that we have are of nature. We need to, you know, really embrace ourselves as being not a foreign species, not a Gnostic alien creature that needs to, you know, transform this planet into something else or leave it essentially, leave it as if it was some sort of prison planet. We need to get away from that. Gnostic ideal has really permeated our thinking in ways that we really need to back off from that. We need to like look at it. I mean, I'm not, Gnosticism is not evil. It's not necessarily bad, but it's really, it's become so much the dominant paradigm that we need to back away from it and move back towards just the most simple ideas and simple understanding of ourselves and welcome ourselves as denizens of this planet. We are in some ways foreign. We are, we're both. We're both something that is alien and also belongs here, you know, and it's only with that understanding that we can really move forward because those are the idea, those are, you know, that's the generative principle. It's that which wants to make it better and that which understands that it's just cyclical and it's just, you know, the planet is just, is what it is, you know, and we need to love it as it is. [Speaker 2] (1:25:50 - 1:25:53) I've got to ask you now, in what ways are we alien? [Speaker 1] (1:25:54 - 1:26:47) In what ways are we alien? Well, I mean, I don't dismiss the, you know, all the ideas of the Anunnaki and the, you know, the potential messing with our species and the idea that we have potential to even believe that we're not of this planet. That, you know, like the way I find it interesting that astrology, as I approach it, is like a guidebook for living on the planet, essentially. Now, why do we even need that? Why don't we just, you know, why do we, why do we need to be told how we need to behave during the seasons? Because we have a capacity to drift away. We have a capacity to invent paradigms that don't fit here, or that need to be brought back constantly into line with our, who and what we truly are. So, no, definitely. [Speaker 2] (1:26:48 - 1:26:54) Man, how can people get books on Amazon, I'm assuming, but also like how can they access you? [Speaker 1] (1:26:55 - 1:28:40) I'm at, my website is michaelmsuiter.com. You can find my blog there. I've got a lot of articles there on outer planets, the inner planets, a lot of stuff we were talking about today about, you know, I view astrology as being sort of a fertility cult. So I talk about that, you know, it is captured sort of a combination of Sabian or stellar cult and fertility cult ideas. And I will be teaching classes. I'm working on classes now to help astrologers, and I don't want to convert astrologers from whatever they're doing right now. What I'm hoping to teach is something that just brings hopefully a more traditional context to what astrologers are already doing. I have no interest in like arguing with astrologers saying this is better, that's better. I want everybody to do what they're doing, but I hope, you know, to root astrology in the most oldest and most thanic basic ideas. And that's what my website tries to do, and that's what I'm hoping to try to do. Do you give one-on-one readings? I absolutely do. I'm a consulting astrologer. I do all sorts of readings, great natal readings, synastry readings, all sorts of things. And it's all, I've integrated all of these ideas that I talk about into my astrology. So other astrologers ask me, how do you, you know, how do you read when you're like working with some ideas that are so basically different than, you know, other astrologers? I've integrated all this, and I'm creating courses to help people to integrate this into their astrology in the most basic level. [Speaker 2] (1:28:41 - 1:28:54) I love it, man. I love what you're about. I love what you do. We totally honor, you know, this unique path that you're walking and unique gifts that you're bringing forth, man. Thank you so much. And to everyone else, thank you for listening.