It's the Awake space and I'm Lori Rivers, your host here to
help you with some inspiration to get those aspirations out
into the world. And for the next couple of
weeks, I'm coming to you from the UK.
That's right, I'm in London last week.
I let you in on it. I, I moved up my trip by two
weeks. I extended it by two weeks.
I wasn't coming out until after the 17th because Matilda, Medium
Matilda and I are doing an event on these 16th at 5:00 PM
Pacific, 8:00 PM Eastern, the 17th in Australia at 10 AM
Australian Eastern Standard Time or 1:00 in the morning if you're
in London like I'll be. I wasn't going to come out
because I had that event, but I took a look at my Venus return
and I was like Boyd's juice here in London.
And I went live on Mother's Day on TikTok and it was like, you
look so well rested. Why yes, I did indeed sleep.
Thank you very much for noticing.
Hang on, let's take care of that pillow.
There we go. That looks better, doesn't it?
All right, I'm calling. I'm coming from jolly old
England, meeting up with my daughter, doing some rebranding,
getting ourselves. We're going to be rebranding all
year long. That's one of the reasons I
decided to relocate for my Venus return, because it ended up
being a 10th house, like right on the Midheaven Venus return.
And if you don't know astrology, that doesn't mean anything.
But let's put it this way, it was right in line with what
we're going with. There's no such thing as a bad
Venus return. It shows where you're most
likely to benefit and to receive information.
When you look at the house that Venus is in, you don't read a
return chart the same way you read a Natal chart.
That's one of the biggest mistakes people make when
they're talking about the returns.
They're talking about the transit to the Natal chart
versus the actual chart a return makes.
It's always interesting recording on the road.
I will be getting a studio to rent for some other parts of the
project I'm here working on. I know, but for this, we're
doing it in the apartment in London.
At this episode, I'm going to be talking a little bit more about
location, location, location, why locational astrology is one
of the oldest forms of astrology and why you don't have to
relocate to have a better return as well as that's why you might
want to like I did it. It worked with my goals, right?
So when I was looking at getting my ticket to come out, I
decided, hey, wait, I know my Venus return is in May.
Let's take a look. What's, what's the difference?
And I popped my ticket like 5 minutes after looking at the
chart. I was like, Nope, Nope.
We're relocating because we can. It would have been good no
matter what. So again, that's something we're
going to talk about. Why relocating can help, Why?
Why sometimes it's absolutely not necessary.
And what you're not seeing a lot of times without experience, OK,
experience plays a role in any profession because knowledge
isn't power unless you know how to use it.
And how do you know how to use that knowledge?
Time and practice making mistakes, learning from them.
I think my biggest beef with No Child Left Behind is it taught
people to be very, very afraid of making mistakes and not
getting the answer right the first time because of all the
state testing. And it really robbed people of
the ability to know how to learn because we learned through trial
and error and experience. I actually look forward to
mistakes because mistakes help me grow and learn.
I wouldn't be here if you've heard the term fail forward.
That sums up life pretty well. This idea that things have to be
conditionally perfect before you can get things moving.
Well, nobody who has attained any measure of success would
have done that without making mistakes.
So if I could give you one piece of advice for the next 7 years
with Uranus and Gemini, it's operate from a sense of
curiosity. Be willing to fail.
Being willing to take that
knowledge and turn it into something because sometimes the
mistakes end up giving you the best ideas, the best pass the
way forward. It's essential.
So we'll be talking about that. And then I've got a boatload of
questions from patrons at the magazine level and up.
I'll be addressing some of those here on this podcast.
And then Part 2 for a patron exclusive for our community in
their exclusive podcast because man, these questions are good.
So I'll do a Part 1 and a Part 2.
Part 1 will be here. Part 2 will be in the Awake
Space community. Speaking of, you guys are
amazing. Thank you for all the Mother's
Day wishes and also for the best thing ever.
There was an autocorrect mishap mistake.
All right, on one of my quips, I had put up just a really pretty
photo. And to be honest, I don't think
about things like Mother's Day, Father's Day, all the holidays,
because I left the United States really, really young, at 18.
And I came of age, I became an adult overseas where those
holidays were practiced very differently.
You know, I lived in 23 countries, 4 continents before I
was 25 years old. Between 18 and 25, man, I lived
out of my suitcase. Can she pack?
Yes, she can. I also learned what I need, what
I don't need. They talk about an experiential
learner. But anyway, you change when you
travel now. That's why the 9th Palace is
about expansion. It is higher education,
philosophy, law, anything you can debate basically, and things
that expand the mind. Debate should expand the mind.
It isn't just a fight where one side's trying to win.
It should be to expand understanding, right?
We we've lost the definitions over the years, people, We we
misuse words all the time, knock it off people.
But anyway, so I see the world differently.
So but it's always nice to be wished a happy anything.
You know, if it if it's meaningful to you.
And being a mother is meaningful to me.
It always has been. I wanted to be a mom.
I never wanted to be married. I was right when I was six years
old because I told my mom I wanted kids and I didn't want a
husband and she thought what on earth is that girl on about?
And I have to say 6 year old me was right about my life.
But anywho, my kids are are my treasures and I'm getting time
with one got a beautiful message from the other and that's that's
the most meaningful thing for me.
So but the mistake their autocorrect said happy
Mothership Day. So if Mother's Day has been a
hard day for you, if it's because of loss or estrangement
or you don't want to be or you were and you're not happy,
Mothership Day to you, I think that's pretty good.
So why don't you get your tea, get your coffee, get your
matcha, get your H2O And we're going to be talking about why
location matters in astrology like from the beginning and why
Astro cartography is not separate from astrology.
Astro cartography is locational astrology.
It's put on a map. I don't know why people try to
make it a separate modality. It's not deeper than regular
astrology. It gives you a visual cue that
that's what it does. But we'll talk about that in a
little more depth and then we'll give some community news and
updates. Again, I want to remind you, you
can sign up for charts and channeling with Matilda and I
on. And if you don't know who medium
Matilda is, she's a crazy accurate medium.
Professional medium has been for over 20 years.
I've been a professional practicing astrologer for almost
30 years now. We're getting close like 28
years. Isn't that crazy to be so old as
I walk around London going? It was easier to do this a long
time ago when I was a student. But anyway, you could sign up
for our event link in the show notes.
It's 50 bucks, guys. It's 50 bucks and it's over 2
hours long. I can guarantee you that we
don't want to go much past three because we both have a ton of
stuff to do. Matilda's off on her own
adventures after the event, so we don't want to wear out for
those. She's got cool stuff coming up
as well. And if if you haven't seen the
two of us in action, you want to because we're a whole show.
We are sassy when we are together and I'm sure we will
because it'll be like one in the morning here in London while I'm
doing it. So I'll be a little punch drunk.
But we'll have our favorite snacks.
We will. And Speaking of snacks, we got a
new moon and Taurus coming up and we'll wind up the podcast
talking about what I think. We'll see that.
If you're looking for my predictions, those are always
put out to my Awake Space community members.
I don't put those out in public anymore.
I know that's why a lot of people followed and watched me,
but that's not the bulk of my work.
Those are like my parlour tricks guys.
Like yes, I'm really accurate. If you want to find out about
how accurate I am, check the show notes.
I've got a link to free PDF that shows you how I'm doing on the
year. It's all based off my 2026 Year
Ahead slides that I wrote back in June, actually May and June
of 2025. And my wonderful archivist has
put together a collection to have you see where we stand on
the year, and it'll come out every single month in the Awake
Space community. All right, get your tea, get
your coffee, get your matcha, get your Red Bull, get your H2O.
And whether we're going to school, grabbing the kids,
winding up a PhD thesis, going into the shower, driving through
traffic, or getting on a jet plane, we're going to do this
together. Why yes, I am well rested.
The minute my butt hit the seat of the airplane from Denver to
London, my eyes closed. In fact, the flight attendant
had to help me get my seat belt on before we took off because I
was out. I was crashed, so exhausted
because I just man, between the energy leading up to Uranus
moving into Gemini and then the minute it popped into Gemini, my
personal transits were very overstimulating.
Like my nervous system was just like plugged into a light
socket. And so I did not get enough
rest. I knew I would once I hit the
plane, I was like, there's no way I won't sleep on that
flight. And my God, I did.
I slept and I've, I've managed to get really good sleep ever
since. So if I look more arrested, it's
because I am. And I'm going to be getting my
well earned massaged on Monday as you're listening to this, I'm
going to be on a massage table because I used to, and this is
true folks, because I do a lot of seated work and work at the
computer. I used to have a weekly massage
just to get the lymphatic drainage going, just to work out
the kinks, avoid the the tech neck.
And then when I moved to Wyoming, there was one massage
therapist within 50 miles of me and then they broke their arms.
So I wasn't able to get a massage.
So that's one of the first things they did was book a
massage that that happens tomorrow.
That's what I'm working towards. I did have my tea on my Venus
return of May 7th and it was lovely.
Especially the tea, the actual tea, not just the little
sandwiches and the the tea cakes.
It was the tea man. You forget how good actual
English tea is until you have it in England and then you're like,
Oh yeah, this is what tea is supposed to be like.
Tasty. But anywho, let's talk about why
location matters. So in western tropical
astrology, especially using placidus houses.
Now this could also go for Coke houses.
That's Koch Coke house system or regimentus or even porphyry.
And I use porphyry when people are born at extreme latitudes.
So if somebody was born in Lapland up up north or very,
very, you know, like southern tip of South America, you know
that kind of thing. We can use porphyry for that if
if it's a extreme latitudes because in Placidus it doesn't
quite work out math wise. There's people who are hell bent
on saying don't use it. The ancients didn't use it.
And I'm going to say, well, the ancients didn't use it because
they didn't have the math, but they certainly did theorize it.
So told me theorized Placidus and the Islamic scholars went
during the Middle Ages, especially the Dark ages in
Europe, really took those Greek writings and advanced them
forward. It's really funny to hear the
Islamophobia in the astrological world when they'd be like the
Arabs took the Greeks work, they stole it.
No, no, they honored it and expanded on it.
The lack of critical thinking astounds me some days in what
passes for so-called academia. But anyway, Tommy did theorize
it. They didn't have the math.
They didn't use 0 yet. 0 didn't come into use until the 10th
century common era. It's hard.
It's hard to figure out. OK, we just have to ask some
questions. There we go.
So it had to do with the math, in fact.
And I wrote an article about this in the Awake space.
I wrote it tired so it could be like 3 different articles.
I reread it earlier today and I was like, wow, there's a lot
there, there. There's a lot there.
You wrote tired, didn't you? But it's, it's a lot of
information, so read through it. And if you go, wow, that could
be 3 different articles. Yeah.
Yeah, it could be. I'll accept your judgment.
I wrote it fast and furious. Well, I was like, I need to get
out an article. It's probably like sleep typing
or something. Anyway, when it comes to Western
tropical astrology, when you look at an astrology chart, the
center bit is Earth. OK, So if you're standing in the
center of the wheel, that bold line that equals the horizon,
and at one end is the ascendant, at the other end is the
descendant. In between is the line.
You're standing in a parking lot, you're facing the hospital.
You look up, and everything above that you're looking up at
is above that line. Everything below is below the
feet, below the horizon. And so the ascendant is the sign
that rises above the horizon. The horizon is a physical spot,
OK, So if you're standing and let's let's say it's flat, let's
say you're in Kansas, OK, And it's flat and you can see for
miles and miles and miles, there's nothing impeding your
view. That horizon line, it's where
the the sun rises in the east. OK, That's the ascendant.
It's a flipped map. The ascendant is east, The
descendant is West, so everything rises and sets east
to West. That's why when we're drawing a
chart, we need not just the date of birth, but the time of birth
and the place of birth, because depending on where you live, the
sun rises and sets differently. OK, it's location based.
That's why Alaska is known as the land of the midnight sun
because in the summertime they don't have a lot of night time
and in the winter time they don't have a lot of daylight,
which is why we will use porphyry too many cases if
they're born like super north in Alaska.
Do you know? Not so much.
Do you know we just use Placidus.
There are lots of classes out there on how to hand do a chart
with the math Now, American Federation of Astrologers.
I recommend Alan Oaken's Complete Astrology if you really
want that foundation there. There used to be these arguments
on whether you could even be a good astrologer if you couldn't
do the math part all the way on your own or if you just did a
chart on a computer. And I I don't think it's an
either or. I think it's an and both.
I think understanding how a chart is made is essential to
being a good astrologer. I don't think you have to hand
draw every chart to be a good astrologer.
That's the part people were really paying for back in the
day because it could take, you know, 12/13/15 hours to do the
math to draw a chart. And then our interpretation kind
of lacked. It was very deterministic
because, you know, think about it, the type of brain it takes
to do all that math isn't always very good at communicating
through language skills. That's just sometimes it is.
Some people have the ability to do both.
Not everybody does. And cultures were also very
deterministic at the time as well.
So for me as a progressive evolutionary astrologer, and
because my teachers emphasized this about me, they were like,
hey, you need to specialize in interpretation because we need
more people moving interpretation forward, giving
it more depth, more breadth, because otherwise you just do a
computer print out, you get a general idea.
It's not, it's not nuanced, it's not individualized.
And it was revolutionary in the 70s, eighties, 90s, because we
couldn't do that before it granted more access.
Sometimes you lose quality because everybody can do it and
we lose. You lose focus on making it all
really good. We lose skills, and I don't
think it has to be that way, but that's how it has been done.
So I emphasize the spectrum of expression that the planets
make, the science make, how the placements are in the houses and
in the interrelationship of of those things together.
That's why we've been doing aspects in the Natal chart in
the astrology crew. Make sure you check the
collection in the astrology class library, in the Natal
aspects library. Go through all those classes.
If you're brand new and you just join the astrology crew, get
caught up. Get caught up because when you
go to ask me questions, a lot of times I'm going to refer you
back to the material there. There's like almost 50 hours
worth of recorded classes that are in depth and and there's
layers to the information in there.
So I highly suggest you go check those out.
So location, location, location is everything.
Locational astrology is one of the oldest forms of astrology.
The three Magi, the three wise men used it.
Looking for that star, because location is always part of
astrology. We're making sense of events.
Your birth is an event. It forms a whole energy system.
Your birth chart is your personal schematic.
Like, think about it like you're an engineer in Star Trek.
Maybe you're the engineer of the USS Enterprise and it has these
blueprints, these schematics that's your birth chart.
Your birth chart is the schematics for you and just like
you have power cubes or or crystals that are used to fuel
the USS Enterprise. So to your son will have
different qualities right. Not every Aries son is impulsive
in the same way. Some may be more of a napper,
others don't nap at all. Some Aries sons love to run and
be active, and others are more academic.
You can't paint it with a wide brush.
We can't explain why those differences happen.
Not today. That's more of an astrology
class. But we know there's a spectrum
of expression, and that's what I focus on.
Location, location, location helps us know how that can
express. So like an Aries born in Lapland
is not going to be the same as an Aries born in the Amazon
forest. They may have shared qualities,
though there may be enough in common.
They can go, hey, you and me, we're all like each other.
Location, location, location. It gives us the ascendant, it
gives us the IC, the descendant and the Midheaven.
The IC is the immune and Kohli, it's the bottom of the chart.
OK, It's it's our home base. It's our interior life versus
our exterior life, which is the top of the chart.
And the 7th house, the descendant, how we share our
energy with other people who are close to us, people we are in
commitment to. I saw a great example of that in
Hyde Park. My daughter and I walk in Hyde
Park pretty much every morning and there are Swans there and
Swans meet for life, Swans commit for life.
It's very sad when a swan's mate dies.
OK, very sad. But there is a couple of Swans,
there's there's a pair and they are nesting right now and they
have this area cordoned off as as they sit on the eggs and one
of them was sitting on the nest and the other was laying outside
the cordoned area near their partner.
So kind of keeping watch. And that's commitment.
There's a contract there. We're going to meet for life.
We're going to reproduce our goslings together.
And I've got your back while you're vulnerable on this nest.
And that's, that's 7th house right there.
That's not 5th house romance, that's 7th house commitment.
That's the contract that's there.
And it's it's a beautiful 1. So a lot of times when we're
talking locational astrology, most people think they have to
do Astro cartography to see if a location is good.
And I'm going to say Astro cartography, which is cool.
OK, it's modern. Modern doesn't mean bad.
In fact, I think Astro cartography advanced our
understanding of locational astrology.
It was created by Jim Lewis, who was an amazing mathematician and
cartographer. He understood modern cartography
methods and he what he did is he superimposed the placements of a
chart onto a physical map, understanding that an astrology
chart is a friggin map. OK, you can navigate with that
thing depending on what your points of reference are going to
be. Unfortunately, Jim Lewis passed
away in 1995, which is the year astrology came hurtling at me.
And remember I was going to prove it wrong.
Whoops, joke was on me. Anyway, his friends so believed
in his work that they made sure it got published OK, but that
was a few years later. I think it got published in like
99 or something like that. You can look it up, it's a
simple Google search and you can find his book out there as well.
Astro cartography is not a separate subject from astrology,
it's an extension of it. It's not even really a sub
branch, it's an extension and a visual representation of
something we've done for millennia, even before Placidus
existed. OK, location mattered.
Why would you need location? Well, human beings have always
moved around and you would have things like armies going into
battle, you'd be looking at weather patterns for harvests,
etcetera, and merchants traveled.
Funny enough, archaeology keeps finding out that people were
doing trade long before our 19th century.
Archaeologists and anthropologists with their
biases said they were. So it's not like the ancients
weren't as smart as us. I don't think intelligence has
changed all that much. We often limit through that.
But there were less people on the planet and less science to
make sense of the world, which is where superstition and
magical thinking come from, right, Is when we're trying to
make sense of things that don't make sense, we're going to
assign meaning in some kind of way.
There's nothing more human than to make a story of something.
So Astro cartography is not the only way or the only kind of
way. We're going to see where
somewhere can be a good place to live.
I think it's a very reductionist and I've seen some really big
mistakes made. I've had to help people move off
lines. They thought they were gay.
But it's my Jupiter lane. I thought I'd be good.
And I'm like, oh, it could be a lot and it can be growth and
growing is cool, but growing is often uncomfortable.
Just like Pluto can be a difficult line to be on.
It can be maybe transforming more than you want to, but for
other people, that's exactly where they need to be want to
be. You know, I'm and, and I have
moved people off of Pluto line. Let me tell you, it took a
minute because Pluto could be like obsessive, so it can stick
to you like glue. It can be something else.
When we're looking for good places to live, you have to get
past good and bad because guess what?
There will always be life circumstances.
But there are, depending on the goal of what you want to
achieve. What do you want your quality of
life to be? There's going to be places that
ameliorate that better than others.
If you need peace and quiet, moving to a city center is
probably not going to be the best route for you.
Maybe a Mars line isn't where you want to be.
Where life is going to be very very active and Astro
cartography should never cost you an arm and a leg. 2.
If you're getting a reading that involves Astro cartography, you
need to have some locational astrology thrown in as well.
Because when you relocate, your houses change.
OK the ascendant all the way through the rest of the chart
depending how far you move. If you move half an hour away,
there's a minimal change. Guess what?
If you're moving half an hour away, your environment's
changing minimally in general, OK?
And so that minimal change of environment will be reflected in
the chart. Likewise, if you're moving
halfway around the world, you're going to see a more significant
change because your environment is changing more significantly.
And that's reflected in the chart, especially through the
houses, whether you have placements in those houses or
not. Now, I became really fascinated
by locational astrology as a young person right away because
it was something I had noticed because I had travelled young.
In 1985, I was an exchange student to Belgium and I noticed
I was really different when I was in Belgium and it was
interesting to me. Of course it was a big growth
time, but going through Belgium and France and parts of Spain up
into Scandinavia is, is a Jupiter crossing line and a
Uranus crossing line because I have the Jupiter Uranus
conjunction at 0° Libra that everyone my age in a couple of
weeks time has, OK, like it's a two week period of time that
they have that conjunction and, and so those lines go through
there. So it's a very, it's a place I
always have big awarenesses. A lot of growth for me.
It was really positive at the time, but I was also a little
more gregarious. I was a little more willing to
try things. I was a little more curious at
home. I was curious, but more in a
sense to get to the root of things, to create new systems
because life was a little more stagnant where I lived.
It was a little harder to get out of there, and it wasn't
necessarily an environment that helped me thrive.
So I was always deep diving, trying to transform Scorpio
rising and change. I'm in Aries rising when I'm in
a continental Europe at the very early degree.
So when I get into Wolong, Brussels, Brussels, I think
Americans say Rowan, France, When I'm in that area, I have
Aries rising. It's very fascinating.
So I'm a little more outgoing than being a Scorpio rising.
Both Mars ruled though. Both Mars ruled if we use
classical rulerships. So very, very fascinating.
When I went to university in England, it was a little
different. I'm a little more outgoing, I'm
a little more open to meeting people.
I'm a little less hermitish, but I'm a lot more.
My poetic side comes out more winsome, more outwardly
imaginative, less insular. Not manic Pixie dream girl by
any means, but I have a lot more overt metaphysical things
happening. Like, like it was interior in
the States. Here it's more exterior.
People just walk up to me. Interesting happenings and
phenomena happen around me. You know, when I'm here.
I was introduced to metaphysics in a very serious way at the age
of 18 when I came here as a university student.
It's funny, I was always trying to bat it away.
I'm like, no, I'm a logical, rational academic.
Don't throw this poppycock my direction.
And there was really no escaping it, nor was there escaping my
purpose and understanding of self because I have a Pisces N
node. So becoming myself and embracing
that side of me was part of my journey when I'm in the UK.
So it's always a special moment. In the last week, I've been
observing how it's almost automatic when I'm here that I'm
in the noticing. I'm always noticing the little
ripples and dimples in a pond, the fluttering of the petals in
the breeze of these beautiful flowers, and the wisteria is
still blooming and moving in the breeze or the wind and the
rustling of the leaves in the trees.
And I have a notebook on me. My writer's self is satiated by
the sensory input I get here. I could just sit in Hyde Park
and write for hours. Just all the words and feelings
and sensations that come in. And so I noticed these things.
And then when I moved to Bahrain in 1991 when I married my my
kids dad, AI was really social and people look to me to be
social, which was really weird to me because I was always the
nerdy academian that was a goody 2 shoes and there I was in
demand and I was more willing to be social and my hair even
lightened. I used to have to go to the
salon to get it back to the natural color because just in
the sunlight, my hair, the blonde came out.
And normally it's the red highlights or low lights that I
have naturally that show up. So I wondered why I was
different in all the different places that I lived.
And when astrology came my way and I began to understand how
location based it is, I was like, well, can I look at
relocation? And of course you can't.
And I saw, you know, from a Scorpio raising to a Pisces
raising to an Aries raising to a Gemini raising.
And, and I'm like, well, that would explain How I Met the
world. Because the 1st house shows how
you assert yourself. It shows how you put yourself
out in the world. It shows kind of how you step
into a room. So as a Scorpio rising, I walk
into a room and I literally walk through the door, step to the
side or sit back against the wall, take a look of my
surroundings, know my exits, see if I want to be there at all.
And then I walk in the room. You know, I'll look for like who
looks nice, like I want to hang out with them.
My moon kicks in in the 11th house.
Who do I want to make friends with here in the UK?
I'll walk in and I just kind of case the joint and it's like my
little feelers are out. I walk around, I kind of mingle.
I bump into a few people because you know, there's no boundaries,
right? Well, my balance can be off
here. I don't fall, but my balance is
a little off and, and it always has been.
People used to think I was on something because it's, it's
like I have sea legs, you know, on Pisces rising.
I'm still Scorpio raising. It hasn't changed my interior
self. It's how I operate in the
environment. And I think that's an important
thing to remember. You do not change in the
interior necessarily. It's how you're moving through
the exterior world and that helps change the interior.
But you don't lose like chocolate is always chocolate.
You can put amaretto in it, you can put mint in it, you can put
gold in it. It's still chocolate, right?
So you will always be you. And then there can be additions
made that change the flavor of you, but you will always, at
your root be you. That's your Natal chart.
As as you move and grow, you transform that.
You transform who you are. Hopefully you mature at the same
time in your Nexus, in the heart of who you are.
That kernel of self remains. We have obscured memory of who
we are. We often use the input that
we've gotten over a lifetime to help self describe ourselves.
And when you have those first house transits, that's when you
are able to shake up what has been imposed upon you and and
get down to the root of who you are, who you were connected with
as a child. Because your identity is there
from day one and it shifts and changed based on outside input
because you have nothing else to work with.
When you're an infant, you don't have agency.
You are reliant on the people in the environment around you and
that helps shape your understanding of self.
And then you hit crisis points that help breakthrough that.
That's part of being human. But that Natal chart that that
essence of self always remains. How you understand that as you
grow and evolve and change, well, that too grows and evolves
and change. That's the emphasis of
progressive evolutionary astrology that I like to bring
through interpretation is that that expansion of awareness,
that understanding of self in a different way.
So your Natal chart is always there, and yet if you relocate,
you change your environment. You get to explore yourself in a
different way and know yourself from different angles so you can
relocate. You know where you live may not
be the best place to thrive for you other people, that's the
best it's ever going to be. There's nothing wrong with
either direction. But I can tell you, if you
decide to relocate because you hate the place, because it's
boring and you know everybody does the same thing every day,
and you're going to bring those same attitudes with you.
If you haven't deconstructed or aren't in the process of
deconstructing, you can always move away.
But the issues, well, they come in the bags with you until you
deal with it. So relocating isn't always the
answer. And yet for some people, it's
the catalyst of deconstruction. It's the catalyst for renovation
of self. It is a very individual process.
There is no one-size-fits-all in life.
I know we like things in neat and tidy boxes.
Human beings love that. We love typology.
We love to be told what class we are, what category we are,
because then we don't have to think about it too much, right?
Thinking about it makes our brains hurt.
I like that hearty sensation in the brain.
But not everybody does. Remember, typology is a place to
start. It is never the end.
So just being knowing your sun sign or knowing your rising sign
or your moon sign, that's a place to start.
It's not the end of the journey. So same with relocation.
You can relocate and see is it better for your career goals,
your family goals? Is it better overall?
Is it a place where you can grow and meet your ambitions?
Is it a place you can find a cozy sense of home?
It depends on each and every single person's perceptions,
your background, that all has to be factored in.
And for some people it's absolutely world changing in a
good way. And other people, depending on
their mindset, it may not be the best thing for them.
Mindset is everything you know. You can't change your life on
mindset alone, but your mindset definitely is what colors your
experience regardless of circumstances.
Whether it's good, bad, in the middle, up and down, sideways,
inside out, it doesn't matter. Mindset is is how you're going
to perceive things. So if you want to use your free
will, if you want to use your agency as an adult with car keys
and a job or the potential to have those things, then you
know, then it's going to take a little bit of work.
There's no magic wand, not even a relocation.
But if if you're lucky and relocation works well for you,
it can open your vistas. And so that's something I work
with my clients on a lot. I help a lot of people move or
find better ways to use the energy right where they're at
because honestly, if you're not addressing things right where
you're at, you're going to be addressing them from different
angles no matter what line you're on with the Astro
cartography laid out. So to bring it back full circle,
Astro cartography is not separate from astrology.
It is a form of locational astrology, which has always been
done. Location is always a factor.
In astrology, in how we make up charts because especially in
western tropical astrology, we use a geocentric point of view
and Earth centered point of view because we live on Earth.
No, we know the Earth is not the center of our Galaxy, our solar
system. We know that, but it actually is
to our human understanding the Earth is the center of our
personal universe because this is where we walk, move and
breathe. We can intellectually know we
are not the center of everything, but to our physical
experience, to the illusion of being physical on this planet at
this time in this body, it is, it is this is this is how we
experience. You can have a a world changing
event. Maybe it's a storm or political
activity or an economic situation.
And even if it barely touches you, maybe you know someone who
knows someone it impacts. You're going to try to
personalize it to you. I see it every single day in my
comments, every single day where people are impacted in some way
or attach impact to themselves through a world event because
that is our understanding of how to go through life.
And unless you are a philosopher, a dreamer, a
creative thinker, 9 times out of 10 you're going to make these
events personal. And that's why we use the
geocentric point of view. And there's nothing wrong with
being centric to the situation unless it's a damaging your
experience in life. Which is why I warned you about
falling prey to the propaganda and the disruption and the panic
because it's not giving you a quality of life.
It doesn't mean it doesn't impact you either directly or
indirectly. It's how you process that
information that makes all the difference.
OK, so I think it's time for some community news and welcome
to our newest members to the Awake Space community.
And I just want to remind you, as a new member, you have
special savings. And that means if you've not
been a member of the Awake Space community in the Patreon in the
past, if you sign up in the next month, you save, I believe, 25%
on annual subscriptions. So you'll see that publicly
listed at the top in a banner. Make sure you check that out.
I can't offer it to existing members.
I wish I could. That's not my call.
That is the platform's decision. I would love to give everybody
little Gifties, but there's a lot of great information whether
you're looking to learn more about astrology or how to dive
in and use your own agency. I try to mix up the language so
it's not all astrological ease because you know things aren't
going to get less disruptive as we go through the next couple of
years and even decades. We're in massive systemic change
and we get to be part of that change.
That's a privilege. It is a privilege to be alive at
this time, at this place, in this body.
And it doesn't always feel like a privilege.
I know that I know, I know from first hand experience.
But I also know a few tips and tricks, skills and frameworks
that can help it be much more rewarding to be in a physical
body at this time on this planet, moving through these
changes and building the substructures necessary to make
the future a lot more fun to be in.
All right, let's get going with the community news.
Well, without our community at the Awake Space, we wouldn't
have a podcast. Thanks to our community, they
sponsor this and I don't have to work with corporate sponsors or
deal with ads. Maybe one day I'll get that
YouTube monetized. I haven't yet.
Money is not my motivator. It's not.
I learned how to use it and work with it.
But my motivator is always gaining experience, sharing
experience and building community.
And that's something we've got to the NTH degree in the awake
space. Just a wonderful group of people
supporting members. That is the paying members at
the $5 level and up get access to our community chats.
And some of those are tier dependent.
But let me tell you, the lounge, the predictions thread, the
creativity thread, these are all things everybody is welcome to.
That's where my lives go through.
If we're members. It's amazing the amount of
messages I've gotten in the last six weeks about how this
community has been a lifeline for people as we go through
these very strange, disruptive times as massive systemic change
really kicks into gear. Nothing will ever be the same as
it was. The big detonation happened in
2020, and in 2025 the Jenga tower fell.
That was something I talked about for quite some time.
And now the board is getting swept and we have to look at
building from bits of the foundation that still have
integrity. And if you look at all the
archaeology that's being done right now where like even in
Turkey, they've rebuilt this Greek Amphitheatre based off of
the ruins they could find. And there were enough pieces
with integrity that they could build this arena up as it had
once been like 2500, three, 3500 years ago.
I don't remember. So when where they found the
statue of Athena? Athena.
And if you ever played Age of Empires, I think it was a, it
might have been Zeus. I think it was Zeus, something
like that. It's one of those old
Civilization games. I am Athena.
That came into my head as soon as I saw the statue, which is
pretty cool. And Artemis 2 going to the moon.
Artemis, a moon goddess. Women are showing up in all
kinds of different ways and I wouldn't say that's the divine
feminine. I would say that is femininity.
You know this idea that we're soft and obedient and compliant
submissive boy, isn't that a male centric point of view
patriarchy and the women who support it but I digress.
Anyway, community news again, my thanks to our community.
There are so many people who show up every single day to be a
support, to check out the vetting chamber, see who needs
an extra bit of virtual hugs or just witnessing as they go
through life. It's great place to scream into
the void to the people who show up with their creativity and
their tips and hints on on gardening and food preparation
and all those fun things. Not in a crazy prepper way, but
in a realistic way. Who's been telling you for the
last six years, grow something, anything.
Even if you can only grow micro greens or leafy greens, well,
look at where iceberg lettuce is now on those shelves.
In some places it's three, almost $5 a head.
So if you can do it, we've got people who are experienced,
willing to give you the information, give you
references, you know, get you out there finding the
information you need to get started.
What does that have to do with astrology?
Everything. And if you are at the magazine
level and up, remember you get the gardening seminar and the
little Zine that I made for the Astrology of Gardening.
It's a fun one hour lecture with an ebook that gives you some
beginning tips and hints and vegetables that are pretty easy
to grow, as well as my fairy salad recipe.
That's right, edible flowers. It's pretty, it's fun, and my
kids used to love that when they were little.
What else is coming up? We're still going to be going
live in both the awake space and in Laurie's lab.
Hold on on Laurie's lab. My daughter and I are just now
sitting down to do schedules, so that'll come out this week.
We also have Matilda and I have our event charts and channeling
the 18th in the United States, 5:00 PM Pacific, 8:00 PM
Eastern, and 1:00 AM in the UK on the 17th.
And if you're in Australia or in those time zones and then it's
at 10:00 AM Eastern Australian Standard Time.
There, I said it. So without you, there is no me.
I love to welcome our newest members and I'll do that right
now. Let's take a look.
So many good people to thank and I think I can't thank everybody.
There's over 2000 supporting members.
That means paying members. We have over 5000 free members.
How cool is that? So we go live at least once a
month for everybody, free and paid.
And that's where we get deeper connections, you know, a little
more of Lori lore, and we have fun.
They're usually not safe for work.
We're a little boisterous in there.
And then, you know, when there's world events, things like that,
I'll hop on. But yeah, so you can join it for
free. I've got some free articles.
I've definitely got free resources.
Check out the pinned post OK for beginning astrology resources
and for deeper dives. It's it's written by tier and
access level. But if you want a one stop for
where everything is, that pinned post is gold, my friends.
All right, let's get to it and think.
I don't know how to pronounce this, and I'm going to do my
best. So please, if I butcher your
name, let me know the proper pronunciation.
We've got Katarzina. Katarzina or Zenya.
Vonda. May Cara or Cara Demi.
Still me. Harmony, Jasmine.
Unbothered hand. Joey, Leslie, Shira, Amelia,
Deborah, Jen, Sarah Rose, Katie Beautiful Scars We Lydia Jen
Hippie Mystic, Wendy Susan, Amanda, Joanna, Molly, Amethyst,
Gabriella and Claudia. Miranda, Jen, Catherine, Marie,
Daniela, Tara, Alyssa, Alexia, Barbara, Karen, Amanda, Joyce,
Sue, Meredith, Lilith, Jackie and Anna Carey.
Welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for being a
part of the Awake Space community.
And make sure you come into the chats and say hello.
There's no clicks. We don't do that.
Everybody's welcome to come in. We are not here to be like
minded. We are here to be like hearted.
So people have their own points of view, their own way of
expressing themselves, and as long as it's not harming
everybody, we're OK with that. Holding different opinions is
not is not a problem. Being mean is.
So our main role is don't be a Dick.
OK. If you can follow that rule,
you're all right. OK, let's move on to answering
questions. Some of those have to do with
return charts, but there's a whole lot.
So we're only going to get to sun because I need to talk about
that New moon and Taurus coming up at the beginning of next
week. I've been asking our magazine
subscribers to toss me questions to talk about on the on the
podcast here. And man, this week people really
came through. You tell Uranus is in Gemini
now. The questions are just popping
and they're good ones. Remember, the quality of the
answer is wholly dependent on the quality of the question.
It's like if you ask me something like thoughts, I'm
going to give you a sarcastic answer.
Thoughts is not a good question. So I had a bunch of people on
TikTok ask me about the hantavirus.
I have personal experience with potential exposure to that.
Not the Andy's version but a version common in the Pacific
Northwest and it is not easy to get.
Although I have known someone who did get it and it was very
life changing. You don't want it but my
children and I had potential exposure to it and not going to
lie that was nerve racking. But it's not easy to contract if
it mutated or something, you know, but it's not like a
coronavirus, A coronavirus. There's a lot of things that are
coronavirus, you know, the flus different colds those spread
much easier. Follow the immunologist, follow
the epidemiologists. Don't just believe Joe Schmo
with a lot of opinions, reading newspaper articles.
Those those articles and those headlines are designed to panic
you. Please don't let them get to
you. And don't argue with the PhDs.
You know, just don't. Why would you argue with the
PhDs? That's their job to know.
And if you think, oh, that's because the CDC has been
ransacked, yeah, that's a problem.
It's a big problem. But before the coronavirus
pandemic, most people had no idea what the CDC was, let alone
and was in charge of it unless they had a vested interest.
And there's been many a health crisis you haven't heard about
before and since. I'm not, I'm not defending the
current administration. That would be the last thing I'd
ever do. But take a breath.
Listen to the actual experts. Stop listening to talking heads
if they don't, if they don't work in that field, if they're
not a medical professional that specializes in that, because
just because somebody has a doctor, it doesn't mean they're
a medical doctor or an immunologist or an
epidemiologist that your sources.
But you know, always approach things with caution.
What can you do? You wash your hands, wear a
mask, you do things that mitigate exposure, get
vaccinated, depending on what's coming up.
Those are all important things. So the questions for this week,
I'm going to just read you the questions and then I'm going to
tell you the answers and which is going to be in the Patron
Exclusive podcast. So let's see, I got a bunch, I
got a bunch. JC says if we're on the
cartography train, what would make a good indicator for
someone to experience a transit in one location versus another?
That's a great question. We'll probably answer that one
here and then do a Part 2 on the patron only Jenesse or Genesee,
like Tennessee. Got it.
Genesee, what in astrology do you feel needs to be heard or
focused on more, and what gets too much focus that you find as
less demanding of your attention?
My God, Genesee, I could write a book.
Do I have thoughts on that? We'll try tackling a little bit
of that here. That could be a whole episode.
Miss Laura Dubs, what inspired you to be an evolutionary
astrologer? And what's the difference
between American and European astrology?
And that's a really good question as well.
I think I'll, I'll tackle those here.
Let's see, we've got people jumping on the Astro cartography
pile. Not necessarily a question, says
Shelby. But just jumping on the pile.
It'd be cool to hear about your experiences living in different
areas and how that astrologically affected you.
I talked a little bit about that already on the podcast, but I
think that's just a good thought to keep in mind.
And over the next couple of weeks, I'll share my insights.
And especially like this trip, last trip was its own thing and
you guys can read about that. And the lorry thinks out loud.
What is it at category collection?
Sorry it's late, my brain just went in the collection.
Laurie thinks out loud. I wrote articles two years ago
when I was traveling with my daughter.
But yeah, I'm looking at things a little differently this time.
And to describe and even write about my experiences.
So stay tuned for that. Alicia asks, adding to the Astro
cartography train. How was your Venus return in
London and what insights did you have?
How this played out compared to if I would have stayed in the
States. You know, I'll, I'll tackle that
a bit in this episode and it's another one of those.
I think we'll just talk about it as time goes along.
Miss Laura Dubs asks again. Can I just say that I love these
calls for questions. You're welcome.
Miss Laura Dubs Alyssa asks a really interesting question.
I think I'll answer this more deeply in the patron only, but
we'll, we'll bring up the question right now and then
we'll look at how we're going to answer that here.
Ancestral tries to land in Astro cartography and mainly I've been
looking at places my ancestors have come from and the planetary
lines and trying to learn about myself from this.
I don't know this if this is what I'm supposed to be doing
though. Just something I thought about.
I've got that. So looking at places, I can't
pronounce the place where your grandma came from or I would
mention it, but I don't want to butcher it.
So anyway, yeah, I can talk about that a little bit.
I'll talk a little bit here, but I'll definitely go more in depth
in the patron, only in the community pod.
Let's see AG, the question is, what exactly is affecting us?
Is it energy, gravity, the interactions between the
placement of the planets? Like how is the sausage made?
So you're looking at why does astrology work?
OK? Like why do we attribute the
different energies to different ways consciousness expresses?
And I can't answer that here, that I think that's an important
question, but I could, you're probably not going to like the
answer is because it's a lot like because we said so, but
we'll answer that. And then Andy asks, can you talk
about the higher octave of or Uranus being the higher octave
of Mercury? I'm enthused on the groupthink
versus someone's own intellect. I love when you talk about
astrological transits and how it works.
Thank you, Andy. That is its own podcast episode
as well. But I'll, I'll answer it a
little bit here and then in more depth for the patron only pod.
So let's let's go to the Astro cartography questions first.
So JC's question about dealing with a transit.
So first of all, transits and planetary returns are both the
same and different. So when you're looking at
transits, they're on the outside of the Natal wheel.
OK, so you have your birth chart, and then when you make a
chart that shows the transits to the Natal chart, those are
outside of it because the moving energy is moving around the
static energy of the snapshot of time and space crystallized into
physical form, which is you. That's your birth chart.
You and your birth chart, you're synonymous.
The transits are impacting you in different sectors of life,
OK? Or arenas of life.
That's what the houses are. And there's signs in the houses
and bloody, bloody blah. So first of all, by transit,
unless you're going to stay somewhere for a really long
time, just going somewhere for a day isn't going to change your
relationship to the transit itself.
The transit will continue transiting the Natal chart.
You could do it comfortably or uncomfortably, I suppose.
But even if you thought you were seeking comfort, if it's a if
it's a transit where you have to do some deep thinking and deep
diving and healing, you know, believe it or not, even going to
a beach with a Mai Tai may not be giving you what you thought
you were going to get. A return chart is a different
story. So even though yes, a return, a
planetary return, whether it's a lunar return, a solar return, a
Venus return, a Mars return, a Saturn return, yes, it is a
transit. And that transit starts when the
planet is within orb of the Natal placement.
But the return itself makes a chart.
OK, so your Natal placement is like a default setting.
A return chart shows a theme for a period of time that is based
on your Natal chart, but it's separate.
It's its own thing. It shows a theme.
OK, so for transits, you're going to go through it no matter
what. It's going to happen just like
you're going to have a return no matter what.
If you want to set the return chart in a more amenable
situation, then yeah, a relocation can help.
In my case, with this Venus return, I did something I've
never done. I've always lived with the
return as it was because I had very wise teachers.
You know, I had some famous ones that people have heard of, but
I've also had people who were extremely accomplished
astrologers that nobody had ever heard about that had immense
backgrounds and who had studied with, you know, amazing,
masterful astrologers. And so when I was a young woman
learning astrology, these guys were like, well, you can
relocate, but you're missing this, this and this.
So I'd look at a solar return and be like, oh, no, it's an
8000 solar return. And they're like, well, you're
not going to die. That's not what that means, you
know? And they'd be like, you have to
transform. Well, I did need to transform
back then. I needed to vastly shift my
perceptions of myself, of how the world viewed me, of my
interactions with other people that, you know, I had
experienced a great deal of adversity as a young person, as
a child. And my perceptions of myself and
the world were skewed, you know, about what I deserved, what I
didn't deserve, what I needed to earn, what I didn't need to
earn, what I needed to prove, what I didn't need to prove,
what my value was, what I deserved in relationship and
agreement across the board, not just romance.
And I might be only looking at something like black and white,
good and bad, especially when I was younger, right?
Because I had the same social training everybody else does and
I had the religious training and all the beliefs, those were all
up on tack. And so especially Cosmo, who was
in his at the time. So I'm beginning my life in my
mid 20s and Cosmo is at the end of his in his 90s.
He was born in the early 1900s. He wasn't born in 1900, but
close. And he really taught me about
perspective and experience and why it matters.
And I still had the hubris of a young astrologer.
And he never gave me a hard time for it.
He'd laugh at me, you know. But Cosmo.
And that was his real name, guys.
I wasn't just like a username on the Internet.
He was an astrologer named Cosmo.
And I think that's very cool. He, he impressed upon me that I
wasn't seeing everything and that I might just want to go
through the experience and record it.
And I had, I had stinking thinking, you know, I, I had
seen enough, been through enough that my expectations of good
things were low. They were low.
And I was always pleasantly surprised when, when they
happened because for me, the habit was when life got good,
things went away. I lost people.
I lost things that mattered to me.
You know, I had to make these life and death decisions a lot,
and there was always loss involved.
And that was really hard to deal with, you know, And I think a
lot of people can understand that, especially when times are
difficult like they are now. It's easy to worry about the
closet of shoes getting ready to drop or the rug being pulled out
from you. You're like, oh, I have this
opportunity. You know, it didn't mean I
didn't do well. It didn't mean I didn't succeed
or meet goals. I also had unreasonably high
expectations on myself as a young person, Especially if
you're under resourced or under networked, you know those things
matter. It's not just what you know.
There's a reason I say knowledge isn't power unless you know how
to use it. And some of that is through
connecting with other people. And, and I wasn't good at
picking out the right people. Took me a long time to learn
that I was really good at getting teachers.
OK, that was about it. I chose not to relocate for a
lot of those returns until this year.
You know, this year I decided to because A, it was easy for me to
do. I was already coming this
direction anyway. It was just a matter of deciding
which date and it fit with the goals of the year.
It was like, Oh my God, that's exactly what we've been
planning. This one, please, The other one
and this kind of there was a second question asking, you
know, how would have been different.
It was if I was in the States, it would have been more
planning. You know, it would have been
more set up. It still would have happened and
stuff was going to more stuff would come out of the blue
instead of showing up. Stuff will still show up with
this experience. So it's a 14 month theme.
It's not, it's not just the day itself.
It's a theme. That chart shows information for
14 months out into the future. So interesting things were
already happening before I left. I had some the week before the
return were some very, very fascinating and interesting
events and things that came out of left field.
And I think more of that might have happened.
I think I have to be more strategic with this one, which
is something I plan on being. And my daughter and I were
already planning on the things like the branding and upping the
quality, getting some different podcasts out that aren't
astrologically focused per SE. Everything I do is astrological,
but I don't always use astrological ease.
I don't always speak in the astrological terms, you know, so
like healing the money wound, the book, the framework for
rebuilding confidence, value and wealth.
There's no astrology outright in there.
I've translated it all because astrology deals with every
aspect of life. And if you want to be a really
good astrologer, you need to have a lot of information about
a lot of things. It is a polymaths game.
If you're going to be a masterful astrologer, it's not
just about getting out a book and reading definitions.
That's a place to start. It's not a place to finish.
OK, it's a stepping stone, but it is not the cooked full meal
deal. So I hope that answered those
questions. Let's see Genesee, what in
astrology do you feel needs to be heard or focused on more and
what gets too much focus and I find as less demanding of my
attention got so many things. This is a hard one day answer I
could answer this every episode. I think there is an over focus
on the big three. I think the big you know the my
sun moon and rising or however people want to express that big
three because it's a great icebreaker.
It's a great thing to have at a networking event or a party to
get talking to people, but it has no more depth than that.
I think a lot of people will bring their biases into the
table because you know, like some people like I hate Gemini's
or I hate Scorpios or I hate Leo's and you really don't.
You probably know people with placements and all those signs,
and you probably have placements with those signs as well.
Or everybody has all 12 signs in their chart, whether you have a
placement in it or not directly. So a lot of times when we don't
like certain energies because it's a reflection back to an
aspect of self we don't like about ourselves.
But when it comes to the big three, it's like saying I was
born in this country, in this province or state, in this city,
you know, and you can not just sit ahead and say, OK, all
right, it's an American from Oregon who was born in Portland.
And you can make assumptions about that.
And some of them might be pretty accurate, but it's really not
going to tell you a whole lot more about the person than that.
So you know what else transits out of context?
You know, these, if you're a cardinal sign, this is what this
means for you. Notice I don't do a lot of
those. I could probably get a lot more
traffic if I did, but it's bad astrology.
So I think a lot of times people over emphasize the outer planets
to the detriment of what's happening in the interior.
There's that as well. So that's my short answer.
But again, I could probably do a whole podcast series, not just
an episode on that very question.
So if you have follow-ups for that, let me know.
In the Q&A Magazine Deep Dive chat, Miss Laura Dubs what what
made me want to be or what inspired me to be an
evolutionary astrologer. So when I first started studying
astrology, I didn't realize there were so many branches and
psychological astrology was really prevalent and I was
interested in that. And then I was lucky enough, and
I mean that lucky enough to have teachers who demanded I learned
mundane astrology on top of personality and psychological
astrology because they were trained old school.
But at the time, it was considered not done because it
was equated to fortune telling, which is very different.
Fortune telling and forecasting are two different things.
So I kind of took to mundane like a duck to water because of
my background as a political analyst.
Very similar skill sets. I mean I always say it's data
analysis by evolutionary astrology.
It's funny, I was introduced to esoteric astrology around the
same time and both mattered a lot to me.
I have spent my whole life needing to believe in something
bigger than me. Understanding smaller than small
and bigger than big. My interaction with quantum
mechanics theory in college. Being forced to take that class
vastly shaped my worldview and I just couldn't imagine we were
just destined to have these experiences like video game
characters or characters in a book where you know you're born
with this one intent and you get no wiggle room.
In my book Healing the money wound, I dedicate it to my 15
year old self. OK, or the acknowledgments are
to my 15 year old self. It's dedicated actually to my
daughter for being the light on my path, forcing me to be a
better human. But at 15, I was told I'd always
be broken because of what had happened to me and that I would
never be OK, That I just have to cope and suck it up and have a
shitty life. And I didn't believe that at 15.
I was like, I don't believe we're fated to have it.
All good, all bad, you know, I know I have had good things
happen. I don't see why I would always
struggle. I had to believe in order to
survive that things could and would be better.
And to me that's evolutionary. I call what I do the brand of
astrology. I do progressive evolutionary
astrology. And the reason I do that is from
the very beginning, I did not like the overly what we now call
binary thinking that, you know, it's such social constructs and
ideas of gender when we're interpreting astrology, the
meanings of them, of the placements, the science,
etcetera. And I think it was 97 or 98 when
Jeffrey Wolf Green's work, and it could have been later, it
might have been 99 where his work came into my field of view.
And Stephen Forrest's work came and it mirrored a lot of the
esoteric writings I had read on the souls intent for being here.
You know, whether it was Seth Speaks or the Alice Bailey work
or Annie Buzant, Rudolf Steiner, even, you know, Buckminster
Fuller, you know who wasn't known for his metaphysics.
He was, you know, a social experimenter.
And Carl Jung's work, of course, universal symbolism.
And Viktor Frankel. Viktor Frankel was a massive
influence in my life. I found his book Man, Search for
Meaning in the library when I was like 11 or 12 and reading
that changed everything for me. It's not a very long book.
It's not a hard read. It's hard subject matter, but I
was like, man, if he could go through that, I can survive what
I'm going through back then. So I just had this problem with
people telling you you can have a good life.
So I ran into Jeffrey Wolfskreen and Steven Forrest's work early
on and Arroyo's as well. And I got to take a pre
conference workshop at NORAC with Jeffrey Wolfgreen on a
totally separate subject. It was like medical astrology or
something. And that was back in 2001.
And he was just a really fascinating teacher, thinker,
philosopher. And I was already leaning in
that direction. I think I've always leaned more
to how can I evolve as a human being.
Self actualization has always been something really important
to me. And I felt if we just
interpreted with determinism in mind, but we really robbed
people of potential experiences. So thank you for that question.
But that that's how it happened. It's never just one thing.
I think I was always that way just naturally.
But at the same time, when these things showed up, I was like,
yeah, that's what I'm looking for.
And then like I said, I just think, you know, we can always
stand upon the shoulders of giants, but we can also refine
and improve things. So that's why I added the
progressive part. It's not a political perspective
per SE or a partisan perspective.
It is really about progressing our understanding of what it is
to be human and to evolve. And it's not all based around
procreation or past lives, etcetera.
And I promised on a TikTok I would talk about past life.
So if you're in the magazine tear and you have questions
around past lives, please put them in.
I don't negate that they're real.
I've had my own fair share of past life experiences.
I think there's an overemphasis on that.
It's easy to get distracted and forget about living in this body
in this time. And so managing that
interconnection through time and space and experience is
important to help us use that knowledge instead of be pulled
by it. But anyway, so that's why that's
why I chose to do that. These are really good, Okay.
What's the difference between American and European astrology?
And that's a really good question.
I think mindset, I think the perception and how the
interpretations work, emphasis on houses.
I find that there's a greater emphasis on house meanings,
especially in like UK astrology. No European.
You have to remember there's lots of different countries,
lots of different cultures, and interpretation is always
cultural. So my experience is more with
British astrologers and people with a background that would
equate with British astrology. And so there's just kind of a
little, it's nuanced. The differences are nuanced.
I think in America there's often less nuance in the
interpretation, a lot more emphasis on weighing and
measuring things. That can happen in British
astrology too, but I find there's more of a search for
understanding in European interpretation and in the French
books I've been reading. As I build my French vocabulary
up to speak about astrology, I'm finding in the French books that
there's actually, it's a more poetic understanding of the
soul. There's a lot more emphasis on
the soul and the spirit and understanding the different
layers of what animates us as humans.
So there's that. That was a great question,
Alicia. I talked a little bit.
How was my Venus return in London?
It was really good. It was, it was really good.
It was a really interesting, it was a really interesting day.
It was a beautiful day. I got to see beautiful things.
I got to experience a really lovely tea with my daughter and
I was really tired. I can just really tired and I
just let myself. Be taken care of, which was
great. See, I'm going to wind up with
Lissa's questions, so let me go to AG's.
What makes astrology work? What is it?
So here's the deal. Astrology is a system that kind
of symbolically maps out our being spiritual beings having a
human experience. We are spirit made matter on a
material plane. OK, what makes all of that work?
Well, nobody has the actual answer as to why astrology works
the way it works. We know the sun and moon have
causality on the planet, right? Solar flares impact the planet,
lunar movements impact the planet.
There's a relationship that does involve gravity,
electromagnetism, all of that one stuff.
But the further out you know, I mean, I think the inner planets
need to be looked at more because I do think they might
have more causality. But we don't have any proof.
OK, so why can't really be answered because we have never
had it studied with good parameters.
But the planets are causal anyway.
I think they're reflective. I think the future is a tree
with many branches and it can look like destiny.
It can look like fate, but in between A&B, if A is the
starting point and B is the event, you'll see a million
infant infant testament. They can't say the word teeny
teeny teeny teeny teeny tiny micro decisions made in every
moment that builds to an outcome.
So there really isn't why how do we know it works is because
there is over 5000 years of documentation and and I want you
to visualize this and this will blend into the ancestral
question. I want you to visualize no light
other than the stars and the galaxies.
No light, no light pollution, no torches, LE DS, no cars, and
you're in a field on a hill and you're looking up.
And the very, very brightest objects that appear most of the
time in the same spots during certain seasons, during certain
times of year, sometimes they're rising in the sky in the morning
and sometimes they're setting at night.
Venus, right? And we couldn't see Uranus,
Neptune or Pluto. So put those to the side.
The Mercury through Saturn is what we could see with the naked
eye, plus the sun and the moon with all of the other stars
presence. So imagine the brilliance that
people were able to notice and then record.
And the earliest forms would have been looking at the lunar
cycles and the solar cycles. That's why there were sun gods,
moon gods. Those are the most common.
And then they associated gods with the other planetary
movements. We gave meaning to things we
observed, and we gave meaning through religious or spiritual
or superstitious, however you want to view it, because they're
all kind of intertwined to make sense of it.
But we don't know why. Why is not one of the questions
that can be answered there until it's studied.
I would say it's probably in my understanding and what makes me
feel comfortable is it's quantum physics.
We're all intertwined. You know, the hip bones
connected to the the thigh bone, like why wouldn't different
energies play a role? You know, and we've assigned
meaning to the symbols that we use to represent that energy.
That energy could be a combination of a lot of
different things. So the sun could be a
combination of a lot of different things, The moon could
be a combination of a lot of different things, Venus could be
a combination etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
But for our purposes, that's what those things mean.
There's a spectrum of expression, but they have basic
interpretations and we work with those.
So a lot of it is just like when I was 14 and I was in an algebra
class. I think it was algebra one or
Algebra 2. Anyway, Mr. Owens was my teacher
and he was writing an equation on the board.
And I've told the story before, but I'll tell it again because
it's, it's right connected with us.
So he wrote down A + B = C and he wrote them in different
colors on the board. And all of a sudden I had what a
lot of people call a download. But if you can imagine, like,
the stream of consciousness just hitting and slamming into me and
visuals popping left, right and center.
And it was like, you know, like if you have those scenes in
movies or TV shows, static photos, you know, or you're
going through the Willy Wonka tunnel, you know, that kind of
thing. I'm 14 years old.
I can't even remember what I was wearing because I look super
cute that day. Remember I was 14 and these red
little flats with kitten heels and I was wearing my little lace
Bobby socks and my cute little peg leg jeans and a cute little
off the shoulder type because we could show shoulders back in the
80s because people knew shoulders weren't sexual
objects. Anyway, anywho I have ribbon in
my hair because it was cute. I felt cute that day, which was
rare at 14. Anyway, my mind was blown and I
raised my hand and Mr. Owens called on me and I said it's all
made-up. It's all made-up.
What if A isn't A at all? What if we just think it's A?
What if? What if it's actually Y?
And what if B isn't B? What what if it's actually D?
And how do you know it equals C? What if it doesn't equal C?
What if it equals F? You know, we're just, we're just
believing this is real and it's all made-up.
Everything's made-up. This desk is made-up.
The school is made-up. We're made-up.
And luckily Mr. Owens knew I wasn't on drugs because I
wasn't. I just my brain just talking
about mind blown and the illusion of separation and and
seeing through the veil of illusion that is our life on
planet earth in systems that we create, right.
And he said, Laurie, you're going to confuse everybody, so
I'm going to ask you to just sit there with that.
Those are some pretty big ideas. We'll talk after class.
And I was like thinking, oh, great, he thinks I'm crazy, but,
and I'm I was writing stuff down.
I was just like, Oh my gosh, this, this blue could be purple
and green could be Azure. You know, chartreuse could be
puce, you know, it could be opposites, it could be to the
side, it could be lateral. You know, everything was crazy
me. There wasn't any good.
There wasn't any bad. They were just moral assignments
and, and gender roles. And, and so imagine a massive
deconstruction moment, super fun.
And after class, he called me up and he said, hey, he did really
good there. He held it together.
Those are some really big ideas. Have you studied Einstein?
I was like, well, I've read his autobiography.
I like autobiographies, but I haven't studied the math.
I don't know. I'm not very good at math.
He goes, well, I disagree. I think you're really good at
math. And when you're in college, I
want you to study experimental math.
And I was like, OK, did I? No, no, I did not.
But I was forced to take quantum mechanics theory.
And trust me, my ability to think that weird way really
helped. But he looked at me and I said,
but it's not real. Why are we having to learn it?
And he said because it's unassumed truth, we've all
agreed that this is going to be real.
We're having a shared reality. And you're right, it can be
completely wrong. I was like, but if it's
completely wrong, what's going on?
And he's like, if everybody is agreeing on it and it's working,
then the results that work are what matters.
It's the end point that matters. Isn't working.
Yes. Do we know why it's working?
Not really. And so I think that's a good as
good as an answer as Annie, good old Mr. Owens, if he's still
around and somebody knows him. Thank you, Mr. Owens, you helped
a lot. So there's that.
Good question. It was a really good question
and I'm sorry the answer is a little frustrating.
Let's talk a little bit about the higher octave of Mercury,
Uranus. Thank you for asking, Andy.
You're enthused to think about the difference between
groupthink and individual consciousness.
So again, we go back to assumed truths.
All right, so groupthink is really based on, we all have to
agree on this one thing. We're all going to use the same
slogans we're all going to use. It's like a lockstep.
OK, That's groupthink. And people often use words
without great defining, whereas individual consciousness can you
have a definition of what change means to you.
But when you're in a group and everybody goes change, we can
believe in something like that, right?
Well, each individual isn't asking the group what each
person in the group means. By that, what is change you can
believe in look like? You know, that's a really
powerful question. What does it look like to you?
Without those conversations? That group think is very empty
and very dangerous because it leads to disenfranchisement.
Whereas if you as individuals have a very clear understanding
of what that means and have conversation with other, then
you elevate the conversation and you disrupt the system's
thinking to build something better, stronger, newer, up to
date with the times. Whereas in just regular
groupthink, you don't. So Uranus actually governs both
the groupthink and the disruptive thought.
You know, it depends on how it's expressing.
Remember, we have a spectrum. So from the default setting to
the expansiveness, and it's not from the the groupthink to
disruptive rebellious behavior at all.
That's actually all in the same spectrum down here in that same
frequency, because if you're rebelling and you're just
pushing against, you're not creating anything new, you're
not expanding, you're perpetuating a cycle usually of
violence. So there's that.
So that's what I can say to that.
Now let's go back to Lissa's question and I'll answer this
more in depth in the patron only, but I think it's it's
worth a tender hand. So ancestral ties to land and
ask for cartography. So As for cartography isn't
about that necessarily. It might be an intuitive trigger
for you to think about things like you mentioned in your
question. But and in your chart can show
location to a certain degree. Because remember, the Astro
cartography is your chart laid out on a map.
It will always be a relation to you and your what.
Because you have to remember your family is really wide.
Hopefully it is. It's a wide tree.
And your chart will show your connection to previous
existences of that tree, whether it's your paternal line, your
maternal line. I could see that in a chart.
OK, but you're really looking at 4th, 8th and 12th houses.
The 4th is your immediate family and your matrilineal line.
The 8th house will be the ancestors who are you've got
their DNA like strongest from you have connected to cultural
social traditions in a different way.
It's your inheritance and inheritance isn't always money.
It's not. So it could be various intuitive
abilities. It could be a lineage passed
down. It could be like, in the case of
Wendy, it could be, you know, one of the questions I asked her
that I'll never forget in a reading, I didn't know anything
about her. And I was like, oh, hey, you.
There's like this traditional belief system that you're
connected to and you've got a grandmother or a great
grandmother that's really kind of coming to you either in
dreams or through thoughts, trying to help indoctrinate you
into this family tradition, you know, and, but it's
metaphysical. It could be healing, it could be
beings, A priestess, it could be blah, blah, blah.
And she was like, well, let me tell you.
So that you can look at escrow cartography for that.
But those lines go through a lot of places.
Those lines go across latitudes and longitudes, not just a
specific place, so that those those lines indicate where you
transform, grow, attract, assert, where you're energized,
where you're lower energy, those kinds of things.
As far as ancestral work, that's really more of an esoteric
astrology matter. And I'm not going to say you're
doing it wrong. What I'm going to say is if it
provoked those thoughts, then it did its job.
And but I wouldn't overly associate a lot of astrology to
it without background training, if that makes sense.
I'll talk about this more in depth than the patron only, but
these were great questions. Thank you guys.
All right, I'm going to end the podcast on talking about how to
get ready for that new moon in Taurus because it is delicious.
So we've got that New Moon in Taurus happening on the 16th,
and then we've got Mars entering Taurus on the 18th and Venus
entering Cancer on the 18th, which I frame really
interesting. All of this is about stability.
All of that is about stability. And the New moon is always a
time to set intentions. And with it being in Taurus, it
is about grounded, being grounded.
And I wouldn't be grounded in any societal or cultural
perspective, but really being grounded inside of yourself,
really chaining into what makes you feel satiated, satisfied,
connected to yourself. Like, what makes you feel held
Besides being held? What is that cozy feeling
inside, you know, right after a good meal where you maybe need
to take a nap? It's so good, that kind of
feeling, this new moon is happening in the later degrees
of the sign. I believe it's happening at 25
and some change, and that means it's a project already in
process. So practicing feeling secure
inside of yourself, not being overly reliant on outside
circumstances. Yes, we all need food, water,
shelter. How we go about getting that,
how we go about enjoying that is another issue.
And and one of the things about Taurus is it's all things that
appreciate and appreciate means gain in value.
So when we learn to appreciate what we've got, that's already
working, what we've got, like, you know, it is where you're
like, I don't have anything to eat in the house, but you do,
you do, you just don't want to cook.
There's a big difference if your pantry is full of yummy food or
the ingredients to making yummy food, you can appreciate that
into a meal, OK, That kind of thing.
So look at your projects, things like that, going down through
the magazine. And again, I want to remind
magazine subscribers that you get you get the new and full
moon information in the magazine every single month, including
journal prompts. Including journal prompts.
I'll give you a taste of that here.
This new moon is really powerful.
Don't let anybody talk you out of setting your intentions.
There isn't a new moon. You can't do that.
Even if it were an eclipse and it's not, You can set
intentions. There's never a bad time to
manifest. There's bad ways of looking at
manifesting, but there's no bad time to set intentions for
manifestation, which means to reveal.
OK, that's what the word means. All right, so here's what the
moon is doing. I'm just going to read a little
bit from the magazine here to give you a taste because this
happens every month. You get the new moon and the
full moon info. So the new moon in Taurus is
going to slow things down so you can build something that lasts.
You're building security forward.
If you've been overly reliant on corporations, other businesses,
not looking at your own skill sets, not looking at how you can
build your own stability forward, you're leaving yourself
vulnerable. I'm not going to, not saying
you're all going to lose your jobs.
I'm not, but you want to build your own security and and you
got to do this with a steady, practical and focused point of
view. This isn't about get rich quick.
This isn't about, you know, jump out of your job and be
successful in three weeks. Doesn't happen that way.
Remember, you're setting intentions during the new moon
to see some fruition in the full moon.
So you may already be working on something.
It could be making sure your garden's put together.
It could be making sure you're setting up paperwork correctly
for yourself. Your your systems for receiving
are in good stead. You're working on those things.
It could be paperwork. It could be finances.
It could be less investments but more like putting your money to
work. I wouldn't jump all in with my
savings account on anything. Never leave yourself without a
kush. You could be looking at a side
get to bring in more money to make that kush or that nest egg
back bigger and better. So the question you really want
to ask yourself is what do I have that I want more of and
what can I build with what I already have to work with?
With this new moon, it's, you know, trying to ask for the
magic bullet or the magic wand to work for you is probably not
going to get you where you want to go.
So you can find out more by going to the awake space and
grabbing a copy of the magazine or if you're a subscriber,
download it. I'll put the link in the show
notes. This is a really, really
powerful new moon and I would be setting intentions around what
makes me feel stable, what makes me feel comfortable.
The more you focus on why you're not stable, what you have
against you, why your circumstances suck, the harder
it's going to be to make things happen that really benefit you
over time. Like it really matters how you
how you accept things. So the more you're sitting there
asking with your hands closed, please, please, please.
The less you're able to receive so you can set intentions around
being receptive and appreciating of the opportunities that come
your way. It may not be the dream job, but
it could be with the company that is perfect for what you
need and gives you a foot in the door.
Needing everything perfect on entry is going to really hold
your back because you're making it more difficult to reveal
itself to you. You want to make things easy to
be revealed, and that's on you. That's on your intentions,
that's on your perceptions. And we can blame the past all we
want, but we're living in the here and now and we got to deal
with the present moment. And in the present moment,
pretty much everybody's on even ground.
So there's that. All righty, it is time for me to
take a rest. And so I think it's time to wind
up the podcast. I want to thank each and
everyone of you for listening, whether you're a community
supporter or, you know, just tuning in for the first time.
If you're one of the free members of the Awake Space, I
want to thank you especially for being a believer in what we do.
Please listen and comment on our videos on all of our socials.
That is very helpful and it helps get the word out about
what we do. And if you're a magazine
subscriber and, and up, if you liked those Q&A's, well keep the
Q&A's coming. Make sure you see the Q&A thread
slash community chat and we'll help make sense of it together.
Alrighty, I'm Lori Rivers, your host, and I look forward to
talking to you next week.