Steven Forrest Evolutionary Astrology Podcast

The nodes of the Moon play a pivotal role in evolutionary astrology. We couldn’t do the magic we do without them. But should you use the Mean node or the True one? In practical terms, that might not seem like an important question since the difference between them is generally small – their maximum possible separation is only 1 degree 45 minutes and it’s usually a lot less. On top of that, the need to choose only looms every year and half or so – that’s during the brief period when the True node is in one sign and the Mean one in another. Then everything rides on making the right choice.   Among astrologers, strong opinions about these two versions of the lunar nodes are a lot more abundant than technical understanding of them. What’s the actual difference? Answering that requires some understanding of orbital mechanics – knowledge that should be more widespread in the astrological community than it often is. At the risk of making light of an important question, I often think people decide which nodes they prefer on the basis of the subliminal impact of the words themselves. I mean, hey, would you rather be mean or true?  Let’s do better than that, starting with some basic astronomy.

The fabled Age of Aquarius – does it mean anything at all? Ever since the musical Hair was first performed back in 1967, there has been a vague sense that the Aquarian Age had something to do with hippies or free love or world peace or . . . something. Anyway, from that Boomer point of view, the Age of Aquarius probably ended about fifty years ago . . . that is, unless you bring up the subject among a group of astrologers. Then what you will typically see has very little to do with a song about “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding . . .” Then what you will typically see is closer to World War Three. Opinions on the subject of the astrological ages tend to be trenchant – and the general thrust of them usually runs down the road of claiming that the hippies had it all wrong. The Age of Aquarius is real enough, but that it is still far off, lying somewhere in the distant future. I disagree. I think we are in it now. I think we have already been in it for over a century.  In this newsletter I want to make my case that the beginning of the Age of Aquarius dates back to 1903-1905.  Let’s start with science class.

After spending eight years in the sign Aries, on June 19 Chiron finally dipped its toes into Taurus – but it will only be there for about twelve weeks before returning to Aries on September 17. We’ll have to wait until mid-April 2027 before Chiron settles in for its seven year passage through the sign of the Bull. It first touches Gemini in July 2033, but soon returns to Taurus, and only arrives solidly in Gemini on May 5, 2034.  Chiron’s journeys through Aries and Taurus are long ones, especially when we remember that its total orbit only takes a little under fifty-one years. Divide that number by twelve, and you get an average duration of its passage though each sign of about four years. One key to understanding why it spends so much time in Aries and Taurus is to remember that this planetoid’s orbit is highly elliptical. Its motion is slowest when it’s in Aries. By the time it gets into Libra, it’s halfway around the zodiac. That puts it a lot closer to the Sun and the increased gravitational pull zooms it along a lot more quickly.  There’s a second complicating factor: compared to the “real” planets, Chiron’s mass is low and so it gets kicked around a lot by their gravity. That’s why when you Google “Chiron’s orbital period,” you don’t get the kind of precision we’re accustomed to seeing with, for example, Mars (686.98 earth days.) Some sources give Chiron an orbital period of 50.7 years, while others say 50.45 years. That’s because of gravitational interference, mostly by massive Jupiter and Saturn. Sometimes Chiron is closer to them and it’s pulled harder, other times it’s further away and they’re less of an influence, so it all becomes a tangle of ever-changing variables. One practical takeaway is that while we take Chiron seriously, we should never confuse it with the major planets. Chiron would fit between New York and Boston or just about cover the Shanghai-Hangzhou metroplex in China. Even relatively tiny Pluto – the smallest of the real astrological planets – is about twelve times Chiron’s diameter. So, cutting to the heart of the matter, what can we expect from Chiron’s passage through Taurus?

That title got your attention right away, didn’t it? Many people would rather talk about anything if it meant that they could avoid a true heart-to-heart discussion about death. Even astrologers aren’t immune. We learn in our early days of study that death is the domain of the 8th house, but discussions about that house often quickly veer off into the safer territory of symbolic deaths – endings making way for new starts in life, psychological epiphanies, and so forth. That’s all valid astrology too – and far more comfortable emotional terrain for most people. Let’s keep perspective. The 8th house does in fact cover a lot of ground that has nothing to do with mortality. There are twelve houses in astrology. Into those twelve boxes, we divide everything that has ever existed or could ever exist. Naturally, they are big boxes! It’s quite legitimate to relate the 8th house to many other subjects – deep psychological work, the mysteries of sexual bonding, profoundly honest conversations. It is even legitimately taken to represent “other people’s money” since it’s the 2nd house from the 7th – and that line of thought quickly leads to investments, inheritance, and similar subjects. All of it flies under the 8th house banner. Still, from ancient times, astrologers have primarily connected the 8th house with death. Of all of the points on its wide spectrum of meanings, none rival death and dying for sheer “emotional relevance.” In thinking about mortality, it’s helpful to note that we’re not just talking about your own death or any brushes you might have with it – we’re also talking about the impact of other people’s deaths on you: bereavement in all its forms from parents to pets to partners. 

Back in 2020 when Covid ruled the earth, Michelle and I adopted a kitten named Benny. We only knew the approximate date of his birth, but naturally we wanted to come up with a chart for him. What astrologer could resist that temptation?  Normally when astrologers lack a time of birth for someone, they employ the technique called rectification – a technical process which involves working backward through known dates of big events in order to create a chart that would have predicted their timing. We then presume that to be the accurate chart. The trouble was that with Benny, we really only had one such known date – the luckiest day of his life, which was when Michelle and I became his devoted servants. Working with only one date is a big no-no in rectification. I usually recommend at least ten, plus I want them spread out over several years. That was impossible with a twelve-week-old kitten. For fun, I dived in anyway and fiddled around with the possibilities. I also added some synastry based on the connection between my chart and his. After a while, I came up with a tentative chart. I took it all with a grain of salt, but I wrote about the rectification process in my November newsletter that year. If you’re interested, you can still read it on my website:

My online school, The Forrest Center for Evolutionary Astrology, is blessed to have Mister Sagittarius himself, Ryan Evans, as one of our tutors. True to his Sun Sign, Ryan is an ace at asking the really big questions. A few months ago, I got the following email from him. In it, he raised an issue that could not possibly lie any closer to the heart of evolutionary astrology: I have a question regarding the astronomical understanding of the south node. Do we consider it to be “the past” primarily due to the notion that south equals “down” equals “past” or is there more of an astronomical correlation than just that? I’ve got a scientist here asking astronomy questions. I should start by saying as clearly as possible that I have no definitive answer for Ryan. Why should the place where the Moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic heading south pull us toward old, outworn attitudes and behaviors? All I know for sure is that the observation is robust. It works reliably.  But why?

Since early 2025, Steven Forrest has been at work composing and recording an astrological song-cycle. You can find it where you stream music, including Apple Music or Spotify by searching for “Ten Planets, Ten Songs”. Astrology sometimes gets a little top-heavy intellectually, and yet it’s as much about the seasons of the human heart as it is about insights and theories. Steven's books speak to your head. Trying to keep that precious balance, here’s a song that captures the feeling of each planet – something that’s aimed straight for the heart.  What follows is the story behind the project. Enjoy! 

Which astrological house represents your aunts and uncles? The traditional answer is the 6th house. The reasoning behind that idea is a classic illustration of the theory behind  derived houses. It goes as follows.   Your home – and thus your parents – is represented by the 4th house. The 3rd house refers to siblings. Who are your aunt and uncles? They’re your parents’ brothers and sisters. Thus your aunts and uncles are the “3rd house counting from the 4th house,” which is the 6th.   As you can see, the basic idea behind derived houses is simple. Don’t let that blind you to the miracle it represents. The fact that it works at all – that it’s not just some kind of crossword puzzle we play in our heads – is actually kind of astonishing. There are layers of internal consistency behind astrology’s wheel of houses that hint at depths of meaning that resonate with some fundamental twelve-fold mystery of the universe. If that weren’t true, derived houses wouldn’t work.   That‘s a truly fascinating subject, but it’s not the one I want to pursue in this essay. I just want to use derived houses as a springboard for exploring a troubling area of astrological inconsistency and confusion – and hopefully finding a way through it. Our road toward that trouble starts off with a seemingly innocent question about aunts and uncles. Say your interest is more specific. Say you want to know what house represents your aunt on your mother’s side. She’s your mom’s sister, so you would just count three houses starting with the house of your mother, right? Many traditional texts would say that your mother is symbolized by the 10th house – which is the 7th house counting from the 4th house. The idea is that the 4th house represents your father, so his wife – your mom, at least back in the old days – had to be the 10th house. 

A reader named Clarissa invited me to write about a subject I’ve not explored here before – the Part of Fortune. Let me start off by saying that it’s a technique that’s fallen out of my arsenal over the years. That’s not because I found it ineffective – with some modern tweaks, I think it’s a useful astrological tool. In essence, I stopped using it because I found I was getting to pretty much the same bottom line through other methods, so it became redundant. First, a bow in the direction of the astrologers who have led the renaissance of traditional astrological techniques over the past three decades. They revealed something I didn’t know:  traditionally, there were two ways of calculating the Part of Fortune, one if you were born at night and another if you were born during the day. The day-version of the Part of Fortune is what I grew up with, even though I was born at night myself. Back then, that version was all we knew about. One more point before we get rolling. While traditionally the Part of Fortune was viewed as a lucky point connected with pathways to material success and health, my approach to it is less predictive and more evolutionary. To anyone familiar with my attitude toward astrological matters, there’s no surprise there. My apologies in advance to those traditional astrologers because what I plan to explore in this newsletter will probably sound somewhere between weird and heretical to them, starting with me not being at all concerned with any distinctions between night births and day births. By the way, sometimes the term “Lot” is used rather than “Part,” and occasionally the Part of Fortune is simply called “Fortuna.” As I understand it, its roots lie in Arabic astrology, where there was an extensive system of these “lots.” As I recall, there was even a “Lot of Melons.”

How did an early Christian martyr's feast day morph into a celebration of romantic love? The route was circuitous. Look it up if you’re interested, but that’s not what I want to write about in this newsletter. What I want to write about is affectionate life-partnerships, the kinds that endure through the years.  Perspective: you might find yourself at a wedding. Even if you’re full of bright hopes for the couple, naturally in the back of your mind are the ominous words “fifty/fifty.” Those are their chances of them actually staying together. When it’s our turn to toast the happy couple, we may not mention that statistic, but everyone today knows that something like half of all marriages end in divorce.  But, hey, that means that half of them don’t! And given human realities, isn’t that a miracle? Those are the kinds of relationships that I want to celebrate in this newsletter.