It was a blast being on the Gadfly Podcast this week!
Thank you to everyone who joined us for this special astrology podcast and preview horoscope for 2022. We loved having you with us live, and it was great to see all your wonderful and kind comments.
A big thank you as well to host David Rych, who gave me such a warm welcome to his Gadfly Podcast edition for this week. As David mentioned early in the show, we met earlier this year at the radio station sponsoring his program, and we hit it off immediately, talking all things astro, tarot, and metaphysical.
David has released the recording for the podcast. So now you can enjoy it, using the media player above at the beginning of this post. The podcast runs just a bit more than one hour and is filled with information you'll definitely want to know about:
Check out the podcast for your 2022 astrology preview. It's essential viewing to prepare for the coming year.
You'll hear about key dates to watch, times to slow down, and when you'll have the "all clear" to move ahead with major plans.
Enjoy and here's to your best possible 2022 with astrology as your guide!
For more astrology podcasts, check out the podcast section of this site now!
The Gadfly Podcast
Host David Rych Interviews Astrologer Anne Nordhaus-Bike
David Rych: OK, we are live. Welcome everyone to The Gadfly. My name is David Rych. We have a very special guest: Astrologer Anne. Anne, how are you?
Anne Nordhaus-Bike: I’m fabulous. It’s so great to be here.
DR: It’s so great to have you here. We met randomly. Well, nothing’s random. It was kismet that we ran into each other at the radio station that I have a show on. She is a friend of a mutual friend of ours.
ANB: Yes.
DR: Lou Bruno, who I have to thank for introducing us, because this is great. And I told him that I have a show like this and I would love to have her on, and here we are.
ANB: Yes, fabulous. I’m glad to be here, especially at this time of year.
What do you want? What is the most idealistic, fabulous, light-filled, futuristic Aquarian thing you can think of? Start visualizing it. Because as you conceive it, you can bring it to pass.
DR: Yes, it’s an exciting time of year to talk about these sorts of things. There’s a lot going on, which means there’s a lot of meaning and a lot of interpretation of life, and this is where astrology comes in.
OK, as I told you before I do tarot cards, the same sort of thing.
It’s all like interpreting reality for the individual concerning different methods and that kind of thing. So we’re trying to talk about astrology. So why don’t we go ahead? Why don’t you start with telling us how you got involved with astrology in the first place?
ANB: Thank you. Yes, you know actually I started becoming involved with astrology as a tiny person when I was a little kid. I know, that big. My father actually calculated our birth charts for us.
DR: Nice.
ANB: Yes, is that totally fun? He was a mystic and a seeker. He’s gone now, he passed a couple of years ago, but he knew all of these wonderful things. He studied theosophy, he gave presentations, he explored many things. And one of the things he explored very heavily was astrology.
And so there were nine people in the family including my parents, so you can imagine there were a lot of different zodiac signs to explore. So by the time we were old enough to be pretty conscious, we all actually knew what our signs were, which was pretty cool.
I didn’t realize until I grew up that that was so rare.
DR: That’s extremely rare. I can’t think of anybody else I know that had that upbringing.
ANB: So my dad gave me my start, and when I became an adult, I went to college, did various things, became a writer. And about 25 years ago I returned to astrology professionally and launched an astrology column and really dug into it because I realized as a young person I’d been given this gift.
And after doing 20 years of a career in corporate communications and business, which was a great grounding for the work that I do now, it was time for me to give back and participate and help people in a different way. I still use all those communication and business skills but now I do it by giving readings for clients, and I run a website as well as a business and many, many other things. The products that we offer, that sort of thing.
So it’s really been a wonderful journey to come full circle and to know my dad is with me all the time as I work through astrology.
DR: I love that. That’s very cool. When you were not doing the astrology professionally but were doing the communications thing, were you still involved in studying astrology or were you distanced from it until you came back to it?
ANB: It actually kind of went off to the side. It was dormant for a little while. I was still very much interested in metaphysical things, spirituality, philosophy. Very much like you’re interested in. But I was going at it from some other directions, particularly by studying meditation. So I’m so glad because that piece came into my life to add to this.
My dad was very intellectual. He was a Cancer, a sun sign, so he was very emotional, very feeling, but he also was an aerospace engineer. So he was super brainiac along with super emotional together.
And so he definitely took an intellectual approach and had a lot of influence in my life so I very much went to the intellectual, Mercury-ruled side of life. And then circled back to more of Venus, Neptune, and the moon later in my life, to bring those two pieces back into harmony.
DR: That’s very cool. And that makes it even more interesting, that your dad was an aerospace engineer, because that’s exactly the type of person you would expect not to be into this kind of stuff, right? With all the physics.
I know my buddy’s getting his PhD in physics. He’ll have nothing to do with this stuff. I study philosophy. I’m not an idiot you know, so I mean I try to talk to him about these things, but he’s not having it. So that’s really very cool that your dad had such a broad spectrum of interests like that. That’s very cool.
So that’s your history getting into it. Let’s talk about what astrology is, what it is like. I mean obviously people have a basic idea that it concerns like science and the zodiac. Everybody probably knows their sign and what you know is at least the name of it.
What that means, probably most people don’t know that. There’s the fun looking at the newspaper once a day and say, “Oh, today’s going to be crappy” or something. Or, “Today’s going to be great,” or whatever it is.
But I mean this knowledge is far more grandiose and far more ancient than that.
ANB: It’s thousands of years old.
DR: Yeah. It’s considered to be, some would say it’s the oldest science.
ANB: And actually, that’s a great way to put it. That’s absolutely true. Because astrology, essentially that means the study of the stars, the study of the heavens, or the skies. Astrology was astronomy up until the last 200 or 300 years.
Astronomy as we think of it today didn’t exist because that’s what astrology was. Astrologers were the ones who were the experts on the movements of the planets, tracking timing in terms of what was going on with eclipses and all of the other things that we now associate with things such as astronomy and astrophysics.
It was the astrologers who knew all those things and they were the wise ones of that time. And in fact when they talk about the story of Christmas time and the Wise People coming, they saw the star in the east, those were astrologers. Those were the learned people who were basically following these things and knowing these things.
It took mathematics, geometry, calculations, all those things. And so the history of astrology dates back 5,000 to 7,000 years that we know of. It may very well, and probably does, predate that because who has not gone out in the nighttime, looked up at the sky, and been awed by what is going on?
Particularly the cycles of the Moon, which changes over the 30-day period, 28-day period. It’s just extraordinary to look at the sky. And imagine people years ago when they didn’t have all the light that we now have at night on Earth, would have seen those diamonds and sparkles in the sky in pitch dark in the evening. Except when there’d be a full Moon.
So it was awe-inspiring. It also could be terrifying because people need to figure out how to keep themselves safe. So it would have been nice to know, “When’s the full Moon coming?” if you need to be doing something at night.
The astrologers were the people who could help with that. The other thing that they did, very typically astrologers would have been associated with leaders of any group or organization. So they would have been the people in royal courts or other institutions helping whoever that leader is to manage things, to help people stay in harmony, and run the culture in a way that worked well and kept things within bounds.
Things such as preventing wars, preventing famines, and that sort of thing. In fact astrology actually in part originated because they had to figure out, “When do we plant the crops?” to make sure they’re going to have enough food to prevent famine and to prevent things such as the populace being desperate and rising up and killing the leaders.
These things would happen. And so astrologers were relied on very heavily. And typically they would cast birth charts for people who were royalty or nobility. That was a rarity back then. Only people in the upper crust, or the leadership, or royalty had charts, because only they were the ones where they knew when they were born. Everybody else, who knew when they were born?
Although certainly people knew, “Oh, in the month of X,” they might have an indication of when they were born. But anyway, India has an ancient tradition of astrology. China has an ancient tradition of astrology—thousands and thousands of years.
And in the West, the astrology we know of as Western astrology, the types of things that people—I live in Chicago, you’re in the Chicago suburbs. Those of us who are in the Western Hemisphere, the type of thing we think about astrology tends to be what’s called Western astrology, which traces its lineage back to ancient Greece, Babylon, and in some respects you can actually make a case for that being traced to ancient Egypt because there’s so many connections among Greece, etc.
DR: Everything comes from Egypt.
ANB: Absolutely right. And in fact a great deal of the expertise with watching the skies as well as mystical training and background which I would also like to say, astrologers typically, when they are trained in the very traditional way, really must have spiritual training.
Because it’s a spiritual and sacred trust to be working with this information to assist people in so many things that are so important in their lives, let alone understanding the cycles of what happens in the world and in nations that again, it’s a sacred trust.
And so we sort of bridge the place between, I wouldn’t say clergy but it’s a spiritual role, like a kind of ministerial role, in addition to an educational role. With the information and gifts that astrologers receive, they have a great deal of responsibility toward the people they work with and communicate with.
DR: Yes, very cool, very interesting. You brought up some really good, interesting points too. And the Egypt thing which is very cool. I think that most Western stuff can probably be traced back to Egypt, starting from engineering and mathematics to astrology and philosophy.
Pythagoras, who predated Plato, and Plato borrowed a lot of his philosophy from Pythagoras, clearly, we know that he studied in Egypt.
ANB: Exactly.
DR: You know I mean there’s all sorts, I mean you could even go as far as talking about certain mythological paradigms that traverse throughout the Middle East, go back to Egypt as well, a Son of God coming down and being sacrificed. You know it’s very similar to the Christian thing.
Osiris was resurrected from the dead by Isis. There’s tons of stuff. And I like that you brought up the three Wise Men in the Bible because there’s a couple of passages in the Old Testament where it’s really not having it with astrology.
But then you look at the New Testament and the three Wise Men were really astrologers because they were interpreting the stars to get somewhere. That’s astrology in the most general sense.
ANB: That’s a big thing of what astrology is, it’s signs of cycles and timing.
DR: Yeah. Exactly. So that’s very cool. OK, so you started doing astrology professionally about 25 years ago-ish?
ANB: Yes.
DR: Describe that initial point there. Like what do you mean by doing it professionally?
ANB: So a professional astrologer can be all kinds of things. They can be researchers. They can write books. And I wrote one called Follow the Sun, which is available on my website. By the way, I’m also an artist so the image on the cover, I just like the idea of following the Sun.
DR: It’s gorgeous.
ANB: Thank you so much. It’s an oil painting, and there’s a lot of color in this book, too, and paintings that I did as well. I started doing this because this was a way to combine my love of astrology with my love of painting and my background.
Because my degree from college is in art history. How to bring all these things together? And because a birth chart is so visual, but what does that look like for an astrologer where that could be writing articles, it could be writing a column—which I did, an astrology column for a local newspaper.
It also could be teaching. And these days, so much of this is done online. And these days it could be a website. Years ago it was the old, traditional publishing but now so many things are published in blogs, on websites, or in e-books and that sort of thing. Also consulting.
So some of the work that I do is working with business clients in terms of how do they use astrology to work with their businesses and make themselves more successful and more happy in what they do?
And actually the quote is attributed to JP Morgan, “Anybody can be a millionaire, but to become a billionaire, it takes an astrologer.”
DR: That’s cool.
ANB: The great fortunes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a great many of those industrialists, let me tell you they were using astrologers—as were many U.S. politicians. And they continue to do so.
A lot of people in leadership positions or creative positions continue to use astrologers. A lot of people on Wall Street. Charles Schwab, all those sorts of people, used astrologers. Because they needed to know cycles and timing.
You know, financial astrology is one thing that many astrologers do. My own work is not that. Mine is the study of cycles, working with businesspeople, as well as working with individuals.
The best time to get a reading is if something’s going on in your life and you just can’t figure out how to fix it, or patterns keep repeating.
It’s like anything, when you might go to a professional. Well, very often, astrology can give you a whole lot of information to make your life a heck of a lot easier.
One of the most important things that we do with clients is figuring out what cycle are you in? For example, if you want to start a business, astrology might help you to say, “You know what? This is a bad time.”
But if you wait another year, or six months, or if you do this behind the scenes stuff and then you wait until next year, then you have the tides with you. We’re always trying to help people do things at the best time instead of the, “Oh man, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot time.” Which is real easy to do if you’re not aware of the cycles.
DR: One-hundred percent. And nature is cyclical, just so everybody knows. So sometimes we lose sight of that, but that’s why we have recurring seasons.
That’s very interesting. I didn’t know that about JP Morgan and those bigwigs. I mean I heard rumors and I don’t even know if it’s true but that Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan looked to astrology and hired an astrologer. I heard about that but I hadn’t heard about JP Morgan saying the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is an astrologer. That’s very interesting. That’s pretty profound stuff there.
A lot of people obviously don’t take astrology very seriously, but when you have the mention by somebody like that, that ups the credibility considerably I would say.
ANB: Well consider too that Washington, DC, has more zodiacs in public buildings than I think anyplace else, and an obelisk—very Egyptian, very mystical. The founders of this nation were very clued into these kinds of things.
For example, election day occurs in November during Scorpio time. It’s a water sign. The nation’s birthday, July 4, is during Cancer time. Another water sign. And before they changed it in the early 20th century, the inauguration would happen in March during the time of Pisces.
So they had this water triangle going on to create a great sense of harmony in what was going on. Also, very interesting, Pisces is the sign for a couple of the early founders in the early days, including Madison, as well as George Washington.
DR: Oh really?
ANB: And certainly both of them would have had an intuitive sense of astrology, as well as the fact that a lot of these folks were Masons and they probably would have studied a lot of these things. So it’s just very interesting to think about the fact that this nation and the world in general, leaders, even if they don’t want to talk about it, they are very much in tune generally with what’s going on astrologically.
They may not always feel comfortable talking about it publicly, but behind the scenes it’s really good data to have.
DR: Yeah, that’s really interesting, I didn’t know that. So like is that when the country started going downhill, when they changed the inauguration day, when they got rid of the harmony?
ANB: Well you know they switched it to Capricorn time. It’s in January now. So that’s a time of greater seriousness in some respects, as well as, “Let’s get down to business, let’s get practical.” That speaks a bit to what we’re going through these days with Pluto in Capricorn. It’s tearing down what needs to go away so we can build a new foundation.
DR: So you brought up Pluto. That’s interesting. That’s a good segue to my next query. The planets. In astrology there are seven planets, correct? Or does that depend?
ANB: In the old days before telescopes, yes, seven. And by the way, astrology uses the term “planet” to refer to what could more correctly be called the “luminaries”—the two lights in the sky which are mentioned by the way in the Old Testament in Genesis. The Moon and the Sun, they’re the luminaries, they bring the lights. A light for day and a light for night.
And those went all the way through Saturn. Well, in the era of telescopes, we were able to notice and see in the sky other planets: Uranus (and once called Herschel because of the guy and his sister who noticed it and were able to say yes , this is a planet); Neptune; and then Pluto, my personal favorite. Clyde Tombaugh, who was born in Streeter, IL, and did most of his work in New Mexico, was the one credited with noticing it.
So that adds up to ten planets. So for modern astrologers—and I am one—who use these planets, these so-called outer planets that move quite slowly; Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, there’s ten planets, including the two lights—the Sun and the Moon.
DR: OK.
ANB: Also, as I’m sure your listeners know, and you as well, there’s been a bit of a brouhaha about poor Pluto.
DR: Neil Degrasse Tyson, he’s like, “You’re out, you’re not a planet.”
ANB: As an astrologer, I advise people to never diss Pluto, because you do that at your own peril. You know it’s really connected to major stuff that goes on, particularly from a karmic and a soul level, and it spends a long time in each sign, forcing the issue.
DR: Well that makes sense because it boosts you.
ANB: Also I want to say that in two places in America, Pluto is officially a planet. The legislatures of both Illinois and New Mexico, the two states Clyde Tombaugh was active in, voted to declare that, in the skies over these states, Pluto remains a planet.
DR: Well OK, there you go, there you have it.
ANB: And we are both in Illinois tonight.
DR: Exactly. Would it matter if everybody in the world except for astrologers said Pluto’s not a planet? Would it matter to astrologers? Science has a different way of approaching these things than astrologers do. They were like the size of it wasn’t consistent with what they were defining. It had nothing to do with the personality magnetism or traits that it presents to individuals. Does that make sense?
ANB: Yes. Regardless of what went on in that particular vote in the astronomical society, even though it was downgraded, Pluto was still classified as like a dwarf planet.
DR: Right.
ANB: So let’s just say it’s a planet. Whether it’s a dwarf or a full class one doesn’t matter. It’s a heavenly body that has been correlated by astrologers with major happenings that occur over a long period. So for astrology it doesn’t really matter how it’s classified because there’s enough.
See that’s the thing: astrology is based on so much data. There’s data now for nearly 100 years of the effects that happen when Pluto has collisions with certain planets or whatever that astrologers can look to and see, yes, you really need to pay attention when Pluto’s making some major angles with other planets in either your birth chart or current planets that you know in the sky right now.
So does it matter? No, but I have to say I have a lot of respect for Pluto. So in my book, Pluto’s still a full-on planet.
DR: OK. That’s cool. So besides planets, you have your rising sign, ascending sign, there’s all sorts of different houses, and that kind of thing. And when you cast a chart, it looks like it’s a circle, and you have like these long triangle things from what I remember. Correct me if I’m wrong. There you go. And it’s divvied up like a pie or pizza or something like that.
And you have all these different symbols within it. Why don’t you go ahead and pick a sign, let’s say Sagittarius?
ANB: Can we reveal truth in advertising to our audience?
DR: Sure, better go ahead.
ANB: We are choosing Sagittarius because our illustrious, fabulous host is a Sagittarius and just had his birthday. Because we’re recording this right the day after winter solstice, winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Dec. 22, 2021, and so you just had your birthday about a week ago.
DR: Dec. 16 on Thursday, exactly.
ANB: Happy birthday. Everybody, say happy birthday to David.
Yes, we can pick a sign.
DR: I guess describe, because we don’t have the information handy, as far as what my exact chart would be. But just give me an example and just using Sagittarius as an example since it’s relevant to the show.
Like what would it look like, underneath it? Like what is an ascending sign? What is a Moon sign and a Sun sign?
ANB: So basically, the easiest thing to know for almost everybody is your Sun sign, and that’s your sign. Sagittarius. And so that is what people look for when they read horoscopes, whether it’s online, or in newspapers, or magazines.
When they list all those 12 signs, and people go right to Sagittarius, that’s your Sun sign. What it tells us is that is where the sun was when you were born. This is all based on the moment of, not just the moment you were born but the moment of the first breath.
It’s very mystical, it’s very important, and that’s exactly what the start of the life is considered to be. So anyway, we know your Sun sign. Now if you have the exact time, as well as date and place of your birth, you can get an exact chart that shows you an actual snapshot of the heavens at the moment you took that first breath.
It’s all these symbols and what an astrologer does is to interpret those. Now if you don’t know the exact time of birth, it’s OK. We go by what’s called your solar chart, which is based on putting Sagittarius as your rising sign in your case.
Now if you have your exact time of birth, we can go and look at exactly what your rising sign actually is, and that gives you your accurate, timed birth chart. So you have your timed birth chart based on exact time, and your solar chart.
It’s a really good idea to read both. In your timed chart, the sign to pay attention to is the sign that’s right here at the 9 o’clock position. That sign is your rising sign, or it’s also called your ascendant. And when you know that, it’s the other key piece of data that you need as a human walking around on planet Earth.
When you want to read a horoscope, you want to read both of those signs. So let’s say your rising sign was Taurus. Whenever you read horoscopes, you read both Taurus and Sagittarius. Because both of those charts have things to tell you.
The rising sign is called that because the minute you take your first breath, all the signs are arrayed in that circle of the zodiac. That’s why it’s put together as a circle. It’s a snapshot of the sky.
This 9 o’clock position is the example. It’s the symbol of sunrise. So the rising sign is the sign in that whole band of signs that was coming up over the Eastern horizon at the moment you were born. It is such a beautiful reminder for all of us. Look up in the sky and remember your connection not only with yourself and your body and Earth, but with everything in creation. Very, very lovely.
DR: That is beautiful. Wow, OK, very cool. How many types of things go into a chart? The Sun sign, your Moon sign, the ascending sign. Is there more all the way down? Isn’t there like a whole bunch of them all the way down the list?
ANB: Absolutely. You have a particular sign for all those planets because they’re all sitting someplace. So it’s a snapshot. Your birth chart is a snapshot of where they were when you were born.
If you don’t know the time, typically we might pull a chart for sunrise or else a chart for noon that day. So splitting the difference midnight at 11:59 on the day that you were born. But if you have the exact time, we’ll get precise data on exactly what degree and minute of arc, meaning where in that 360 degree circle of all the signs, all your planets were.
And it’s very beautiful because you can see they’re deposited all around your circle. You might have so-called empty areas like over here.
DR: What does that mean if it’s empty?
ANB: If you have empty areas, it doesn’t mean nothing’s happening there. Lot’s of stuff’s going on. It just means that’s less of an area of focus when you’re born and at various times in your life. When you have a big clump of stuff in one place, you can just tell by looking at your chart, “Wow! I bet there’s a lot going on there.” And you’re right.
I mean, it’s so wonderful to have an art background to just look at a chart and read it and see yes, it has a lot to do with what does this thing look like. It’s not just data in your head or from a computer or from past information. It’s like, look at what this chart’s really telling you intuitively, as well as look up at the heavens.
What does the sky look like? Is the Moon full? Oh gosh, no wonder things are crazy! We know that about full Moons. So yes, you’ve got a Moon sign, you’ve got a Venus sign, you’ve got a Mars sign. It’s whatever sign all of those particular heavenly bodies were in the minute that you were born.
DR: OK, that’s very cool. That’s very interesting. I just want to say a shout out to a couple people here. My cousin Angela is watching. She loves this stuff. She has certain mystical powers herself. I’ll let her come on to her own show. We’ll talk about it.
William Bike is here and says hello. Lou Bruno commented, saying that this is one of my best interviews yet. Wow.
ANB: Thank you, Lou.
DR: Yeah, that’s very cool. OK, so I want to give plenty of time to talk about your looking at 2022. But let’s talk about the solstice first. That was yesterday. This also says to many people the shortest amount of daylight of the year. And then at this coming the next day as of today, the pendulum starts swinging to an increase in sunlight every day, which is refreshing to know because people prefer sunlight over darkness. What is the solstice to an astrologer?
ANB: So basically as astrologers it’s important to think holistically and globally. So in the Northern Hemisphere, yesterday, Dec. 21, 2021, was the Winter Solstice. However, for anybody south of the equator, that was the Summer Solstice. We have light where we all balance each other. Everybody in the southern part of the globe is the opposite of what’s happening up in the northern part of the globe.
And so we trade off. By June when we get the so-called Summer Solstice for the Northern Hemisphere, the folks in the south part of the globe will be experiencing their Winter Solstice. So it’s always good to remember they come as sets, just like zodiac signs come.
You’re a Sagittarius, your opposite sign is Gemini. They are two sides of a polarity. Wherever one goes, the other is always with you. It’s very important to remember that. So what the solstice is for astrologers, in part it is the ongoing drama and story of light. And light is such an important part of what goes on with astrology as well as spiritual and mystical traditions.
Light represents all kinds of things: wisdom, learning, ah-ha moments, as literally light on things.
DR: Insight, clarity, awareness, also. Very powerful image.
ANB: And so symbolically, at the Winter Solstice, which for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere occurred, yesterday, it is the time of most darkness. And so it is a time when we must turn within and find the light inside ourselves.
Ideally what happens is each year that we work with our birth charts while we’re incarnated on the planet, we’re not just going around a circle. If we do it right, we are spiraling upward, and the circle actually gets bigger and bigger as we grow, as we evolve.
If we don’t do that we stay stuck, we keep going around and around and around the circle in endless frustration. So what astrology does is to help people understand how to start the upward spiral to evolve and to let go of the old habits that don’t serve and don’t help bring literally more light into your life.
You lighten your load, you lighten your heart, through love and kindness and all those things. We all know these things. That’s what philosophy and religion help us do to create a better society, a better world, all that sort of thing.
So for astrologers, every solstice is very exciting because it’s part of, we reach a very important turning point. As you said, David, what happened yesterday was the shortest day of the year. In those three days around both the solstices. “Solstice” means “Sun stoppage.”
It’s as if the sun is hanging in the sky before it starts to change and go higher higher higher in the sky. Also, people in the north can see it’s really low in the sky even at noon time. It’s like super low. It’s the lowest it is.
So the day before of and after the solstice, whether it’s summer or winter you can see it’s as if the sun is hanging in that same spot and then it just imperceptibly starts to rise in the sky after Winter Solstice, and starts to decline after Summer Solstice.
What’s lovely about it is, it’s a predictable pattern. And that is such a great power of what goes on in the skies. We’re part of a larger system. We’re part of a solar system as well as our system with the Moon, and we can track these things.
And there’s a comfort about it as well as an opportunity. When we come to that time of least light, oh my gosh, what an amazing opportunity that is to go within. Things such as prayer and meditation, as well as opening to a larger, better version of ourselves.
We have a responsibility to help carry the light and then radiate it outward within our world. And that is one of the wonderful things that the solstices can help us do, because they’re extreme points. They can also show us where imbalances exist in our world and in ourselves. So it can feel quite intense sometimes to people when we reach the solstice.
It’s like a longer version of reaching a full Moon, which as we know can put stress on people. Same thing as we get close to a Solstice and we’re losing light or we’re gaining light, it’s like we’re not quite in balance. The balances come from the equinoxes, which happen in the third week of March and the third week of September.
DR: Right. An equinox means equal night.
ANB: Correct.
DR: Which is interesting.
ANB: Isn’t that? Yes.
DR: Yeah, it’s very cool. It took me many years to figure that out. Like I knew the word, and one night I was literally in Portland at a bar and I was like oh my God, “equinox” means “equal night.” It totally makes sense.
So I just want to give a shout-out real quick. You’ve got some fans here. Mary Gapa Hougaard, Yvette Sandoval, Francine Graziano Howard—those are some newcomers here.
ANB: How lovely. Thank you everybody for coming.
DR: Absolutely, yes, thank you so much everybody. And there’s a comment section here on the right if you want to ask a question, make a comment, anything like that. That would be great. Let’s talk about 2022. Let’s get into the predictive power of astrology. Why don’t we talk about the difference between free will and determinist astrology? Just to give people, just so they don’t like walk this being like, “Oh, first quarter, it’s over.”
You know, you can always change your destiny. Free will is very powerful. Very, very powerful.
ANB: Yes, absolutely.
DR: I think nowadays we tend to forget. I think we’re under a scientific paradigm of determinism. That A happens, then therefore B happens, and C happens, and then that’s it, that’s all there is. But you can actually choose yourself out of a specific timeline into another one. You can do that. We do it all the time.
So don’t ever forget that you have free will and the ability to reason, which is what helps you figure out right from wrong, truth from falsity. OK? Don’t ever underestimate your ability to think. Part of that is intuition, which is a hugely important part of it as well.
Let’s talk about 2022. The last two years have been an utter drag. That’s just putting it lightly. And I don’t mean to make light of people suffering over the last two years. I get it. It’s been horrific, literally. But I mean just for the survivors it’s just—but Biden was on TV yesterday saying, “I know you guys are tired, you’re frustrated, and so am I and this is awful. I mean we’ve got to get out of this.” Take it.
ANB: Definitely always remember free will, as well as the tremendous power of the human heart, and the human mind. The human heart tells us it’s connected in many ways to our conscience and to our higher self, and part of our job, again, is to radiate the light out from our selves.
The core of our being—core comes from a Latin word, cor. It means, “your heart.” And so it’s the blend of intuition and the still, small voice within, along with the mind. And our minds are super powerful. As you said we have free will, and literally in every second of our lifetimes. We have free will to choose our thoughts.
And even though it may not seem like it we have the ability to choose our emotions. Emotions flit through like clouds. And we don’t have to hang on to them and we don’t have to go back and re-live difficult situations. When you notice difficult feelings, we can use our minds to pay attention to, OK, why is it coming up now? Is there something I need to deal with?
Or is this simply a thought coming through because of a situational thing? It could be somebody else’s stuff. Like if you’re ever around someone who’s a drama person, or difficult people, we can reject that. Use your thoughts to do things such as think wonderful images such as love, peace, tranquility.
You know if you think about the Serenity Prayer, you don’t have to be a person who needs Alcoholics Anonymous to benefit from the Serenity Prayer.
DR: It’s a beautiful, powerful prayer.
ANB: Choose serenity in every moment because in serenity, you can use your mind constructively for good. Now we’re always building and constructing things. So this is my preamble to 2022, that I’m trying to say that we have choices and we’ve had choices these last two years about how do we want to feel about all this? Where is the opportunity?
That is the thing that as an astrologer, because we have free will, it is very important to remember: The stars and the cycles offer opportunities at every single moment. Even when our lives feel difficult and challenging and dark, there is always a silver lining. There is always an opportunity.
We discover that opportunity by stepping back, by refusing drama, and allowing the higher emotions of love, kindness, all of those things to come forth. That will help get us off the negative train really fast, and back to, “What can I do to be of service and to help others?” That will also help train the mind to get off of those things and start thinking about, “Well, what do I want to build? What do I want my life to look like?”
So dwelling on negativity unfortunately often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you focus too much on the negative things, you could actually start to bring those things to pass. So how can we use our minds in 2022 to bring in more of the things that we love, that make us feel good, that nurture ourselves and our families, our communities, and our world.
So all of this is something that is really up for work in the early part of 2022. This frankly is an excellent time to slow down, calm down, and use time for reflection. Yes, we have had a difficult two years and it’s global. And it may be difficult to get emotional support. We can give that support to ourselves. If you don’t meditate, get started. If you do meditate, renew your practice.
And prayer and meditation will help. Through all of these things, ancient people, we’re talking thousands or tens of thousands of years, have been using these very simple tools—prayer and meditation—to change the world. And the reason we have to do that now is, 2022 is going to start out slowly. Because Venus, our planet of values, love, connection, as well as justice, is going to be retrograde.
That means it’s going to look like that planet is moving backward in the sky. It is not, but it looks like it from Earth, and that all things are being slowed down or unavailable. So things such as love and relationships. You may have trouble connecting with people. But the cool thing about any retrograde is: it points directly to the past.
So while Venus is retrograde from Dec. 19—three days ago it started, Dec. 19, 2021, through Jan. 29, 2022—this entire first month of 2022, see who comes in from the past. Is there old stuff you need to work on? Or is there somebody really cool that you kind of overlooked in the past that maybe could be a new love interest or it could be a new business partner, it could be a new fun friend, you know, something like that.
This is your time to slow down and look back at the past. Because Venus is going to be like taking a nap and unavailable. And pushing you to do that work with the past so that you’re ready to move forward. We will not be completely out of the woods with this Venus retrograde actually until early March, the first week of March.
So let’s actually just take our time rolling into 2022. And for anybody who runs a business or is in charge of a department or anything like that, if you want to launch a product that’s aimed at women or the fine arts or luxury matters, that sort of thing, wait until after the Venus retrograde is done.
Because if you launch it during that, it will come into the world as a thing that has Venus retrograde and it may be lacking in some way. Also, astrologers often say Venus retrograde is not a great time to start a new relationship. I don’t necessarily agree with that. Relationships come into our lives. It may very well be that somebody at this time comes in or comes back to do a small piece of your life.
And then when Venus retrograde ends, it ends, or the person moves on, or you find out that ooh, that person was not as good. Too good to be true might be an experience that you have. See this as a wonderful learning experience for yourself about how are you handling emotions? What are you doing with relationships? Do you value the people in your life? Did you value people from the past?
It’s all about values. It’s in Capricorn. Are we valuing corporate health over people? That’s another big thing that’s happening, because Venus is in Capricorn. It’s a sign of large organizations, big government, the military, all these things. How do we get that equation right about valuing the task that has to be done, making society work, and at the same time valuing the individual?
Now the other reason we need to take our time in 2022 at the beginning is, many people here have probably heard of Mercury retrograde. Mercury’s going to go retrograde at the same time. Those dates, it’s mid-January until Feb. 3. So I really mean it when I say wait until some time in February, like the second week, to really start gearing up.
And you may find things still in a bit of a slow motion until late February or even early March. Give yourself time, because everything that you learn, and those people who come into your life from the past, are going to help you get a whole lot more clear about what you’re going to be doing.
And then Feb. 3 through April 28 is our all-clear period for 2022. That is the little window of time we have when no planets will be retrograde.
DR: Really?
ANB: Great time, go at it!
DR: Feb. 3 through April what?
ANB: Feb. 3 through April 28.
DR: That’s our recess, that’s our play time?
ANB: Yes, and it doesn’t mean you can’t do stuff other times of the year, but what it tells you is you really have a big all-clear message of nothing is retrograde, so the stars are more with you to launch things, initiate stuff, start a new program of anything, or any kind of self-improvement. You really have the planets operating at full capacity in terms of moving forward. Which is great!
DR: That’s really interesting. So retrograde means that the planet, it’s kind of like its energy is sort of pulling back. Is that a good metaphor?
ANB: Yes. It’s like it’s going inward.
DR: Is that necessarily negative?
ANB: It just is.
DR: OK. Instead of just pushing you forward it’s kinda tugging a little bit backwards, which may be good sometimes. Maybe you need to slow down.
ANB: Exactly. It’s life’s ebbs and flows. It’s the polarity like we talked about before. When you have something, there’s always something else that’s balancing it.
DR: That’s the universe. Yin and yang. So April 28—what happens after that?
ANB: Then we get some of the other planets starting to go retrograde in 2022. Again, it doesn’t mean that life doesn’t carry on. It just means you’ll start to see other planets go retrograde at that time. And so actually, it’s the planet Pluto that will go retrograde at the end of April. These outer planets spend months and months and months being retrograde, like five, 5-1/2 months. And that’s OK.
They’re sort of a drum beat in the background, but anybody here who is a Scorpio, pay attention to when Pluto goes retrograde for you. And you can do that on my website with the current planets data. I think I shared that with you. If not I’m going to give that to you now. If people ever want to see where the planets are, they can do that. I just sent you a link given in the chat for people.
But in tracking the planets, you don’t have to become an expert. That’s not the point. But it’s just useful. If something is retrograde, It’ll have a little R next to it. And if it doesn’t have the R then you know it’s moving forward. https://astrologeranne.com/492/planetary-positions-today/ .
So 2022 has a slow start. And frankly after the couple of years we’ve had, that’s not a bad thing. That’s a wonderful thing. Because I think the holiday season can be deeply stressful for people—even people who generally don’t get caught up in stuff. It’s just in the air. There’s so much stress and so much change right now, and you know more health challenges have come down the pipe.
So frankly, a slower start in January after the frenzy of online buying, and shopping, and wrapping and all the other things, it’s a good time to take a rest. So especially for people in the Northern Hemisphere, if you get a chance to sort of snuggle in and hunker down and be more cozy at home, just frankly get more sleep. That’s one of the things in modern life. Many, many people are sleep-deprived.
So for those in the Northern Hemisphere, use the wintertime to do what nature does, which is get a lot more sleep. When you think about bears hibernating, for example.
DR: I totally shut myself in a lot more during the wintertime. I love it.
ANB: Yes. Eat a little bit more. Be quiet. Be calm. And that is what will help you start dreaming again at nighttime, as well as it’s going to make it easier for you to do things such as meditate and take good care of yourself. And you can set new habits. For people who do New Year’s resolutions, it’s so important to think about where do you want your life to go over this next year?
And in terms of cycles it can help with that. It’s a good idea to remember as well that in many respects we are full on in the Age of Aquarius.
DR: Didn’t that happen like two or three years ago?
ANB: It happened actually a year ago. There’s a lot of points of view about when did it actually start. Did it start in the 18th century, when people noticed Uranus, which is the planet that goes with Aquarius? Or is it going to start in the 2300s or 2400s depending on some other astrological factors? A lot of mystics essentially feel that we’re already here, and the US in particular is a major player in this, depending and based on the time that it was founded.
But a lot in terms of the 20th century is very much associated with things that are very Uranus and very Aquarius in terms of computer and scientific breakthroughs. That’s a word that goes with Aquarius and Uranus. And so that being the case, it also argues very strongly that we need to take even better care of ourselves because Uranus and the Aquarian Age are very electrical.
That sign is associated with lightning bolts, literally: it’s “Ah-ha!” moments and it’s breakthroughs, but it can be very hard on the nervous system. So in this period we all need to do a lot to take care of our nervous system. Because it’s a little hard to ground ourselves with this sort of energy because Aquarius is an air sign. So it’s really easy to overuse our minds.
Again, it needs to be balanced with the heart. The opposite sign of Aquarius is Leo, which is a fire sign and it rules the heart. So we’ve got to get head and heart operating the yin/yang that you talked about as the balance. We need both of them. We can’t be all head because it’s very cold and can be quite cruel. If we’re too much heart then we don’t always have common sense guiding us as scientific fact.
The other reason that the Age of Aquarius is really here is because there’s something called the Grand Conjunction, and that’s when Jupiter and Saturn come together every 20 years. They create societal shifts. For the last approximately 200 years those two planets have been coming together in earth signs, with an exception in 1980 and 1981 when they made their first coming together in Libra, which is an air sign.
As of last December, those two planets came together for the first time in this next cycle in Aquarius. And all of their comings together every 20 years for the next 200 years are going to be in air signs. So the reason this is important and the reason it now feels like the Aquarian Age is, when you have planets in air signs, setting the tone for what society is going to look like, because Saturn and Jupiter are the two social planets, they help determine how we organize society, in air signs, they support the air sign Aquarius.
In the next 20 years it’s all about how do we organize society using Aquarian ideals? And remember, Aquarius is very much about humanitarianism, collectivism, taking care of everybody, working in a group.
DR: Wouldn’t that be refreshing?
ANB: Yes, and cherishing the individual. Letting each person march to the beat of their own drummer, as well as how do we have all these very unusual people—you know quirky, offbeat, and I will use the word weirdo because that’s another word that people sometime use—how do keep those wonderful weirdnesses that make us individuals, and yet find a way for all of us to come together?
Because we are one human family. We are one globe. Unity is a big part of the Aquarian mandate for this next 2,200 years. So let’s go to it. So that’s a big part of 2022 as well.
DR: That’s very interesting that you said all that about the Age of Aquarius. It wasn’t just a song by the Fifth Dimension out of the play Hair back in the ‘60s. And who knew that that play would be so prophetic? And it’s now this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. I never really realized until ten or 15 years ago. I don’t remember where I heard it but then astrologically we were actually approaching the Age of Aquarius.
I was like really, I’m like oh, OK, I thought it was just a song. So it was about a year ago but I got, I knew it was somewhat recently that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re officially now, full-blown, in the Age of Aquarius. Just getting out of the Age of Pisces, which to some would be considered the Christian Age, because the fish and the Jesus sign and that kind of thing. Somehow people don’t go there. I don’t know. I just heard that. Is that a thing with astrologers? Is that what you guys call it?
ANB: The Age of Pisces and then shifting to the Age of Aquarius? Yes. And I just gave you a link actually. For those listening I just sent a link to our fearless leader, our wonderful host, for an entire section of articles about the Age of Aquarius that you can go take a look at when you want to, including a presentation I did earlier in the year for an astrological group and a mystical group about exactly the history and why it truly is the Age of Aquarius on so many levels.
And even if it’s not, according to some folks, we’re going to get there anyway, so why not be ahead of the curve and lay the seeds for this wonderful future that we all want and need right now? So anyway, it’s called the Great Air Mutation. That’s that thing about all of these grand conjunctions happening in air signs.
We are literally mutating to evolve higher as a species. And along with that is coming mutations with Earth. We’re seeing Earth and climate changes. That’s in part because Aquarius’s ruling planet, Uranus, has been moving through Taurus—the earthiest sign, the symbol of Earth, since 2018. It’s going to be there until 2025.
So it’s an outer planet. It sits there a long time. So part of this is that it’s urgent now for us to get our act together and unify and figure out what are we going to do? How is Earth doing? How do we fit with Earth? How do we work together with Earth?
DR: Well it turns out the Earth isn’t doing very well if you’re talking about pollution and climate change and stuff like that.
ANB: So here’s our opportunity.
DR: OK, good.
ANB: It’s also affecting money and we’re already seeing that. But cryptocurrency, banking is going through seismic changes, as well as how do we figure out how to provide for everybody in a more fair way, instead of the great disparities that we’re seeing in terms of money worldwide, as well as economic disparities, as well as just plain difficulty getting an economy to work globally.
So these are things for review and fixing until 2025. So if anybody’s looking for something to do, there’s a lot to be doing right now. 2022 is a great time to press a reset button in those early months with the retrogrades and recommit to these humanitarian missions in terms of what is our individual role in this.
And then how can we come together with other people to do it. I also want to mention that astrology is associated with the planet Uranus and the sign Aquarius. It’s ruled by Uranus in part. Also Mercury from the old days.
DR: The actual art of astrology is ruled by these things? I hadn’t even thought about that.
ANB: Yes, it’s futuristic in its way.
DR: Nice. Real quick, Shelley Wiegmann is on here, she says, “Love this, Anne!” So she’s having a good time here. Thank you for tuning in, Shelley.
ANB: Wonderful! She’s a Sagittarius like you, babe.
DR: Oh, happy birthday! We have about five minutes left. I want to ask you to talk about transitioning from one paradigmatic age to another. Climate change is obviously a huge existential deal right now. It’s probably the most greatest existential threat that we have facing us right now. We literally could screw up everything literally if we persist in our current trends.
A few weeks ago 200 countries got together in Glasgow, Scotland, and decided that they’re all going to get together and try to stop this. Our first deadline as far as reducing emissions by a certain amount is 2030. So it’s literally eight years away, which is not a long time. And if we blow that deadline, the second deadline of 2050 doesn’t matter.
Anyway, I’m also a member of the Green Party and I do a lot of research into this stuff. I have a show on Mondays for the Green Party, and it’s looking very dismal and bleak to me. I will always maintain at least a modicum of hope for anything, because I believe in the potential of human beings like we discussed earlier.
We can do it if we want to do it. But oftentimes greed and avarice get in the way, and tempts us into doing things we ought not to be doing. But there are also redemptive methods and ways of getting out of that. Astrology being one of them. Do astrologers have anything to say about any sort of more grandiose, long-term predictions about the health and future of the planet, or do you guys just go year by year, or how’s that working?
ANB: It’s both. We’re always looking at short-term cycles, as well as the long-term cycles. And it’s those outer planets—Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—that point to the longer cycles as well as those enormous cycles such as the ages that are the 2,200 year periods [2,200 year per age]. And so I want to mention for those of our listeners who live in the U.S. or maybe live elsewhere but either are U.S. citizens or have a lot of connections with the U.S. that a turning point is highly possible this year.
There are birth charts not only for people but for companies and for countries. The United States’ birth chart has the planet Pluto in the late part of Capricorn. And that is where Pluto is right now. Every approximately 250 years, Pluto completes its cycle through all of the signs, so for the United States we’re having what’s called the Pluto return in 2022.
Pluto is a planet tiny but mighty. It is a planet that takes no prisoners. It forces you to change or it kills off what you will not let go of. It brings you to your knees. The United States is going through this drama, and we’ve seen it. We have a great effect on the world because of the United States and its history as well as so many people from parts of the world coming here and living here and becoming U.S. citizens.
Because of the birth date in 1776, it’s a nation built by people who didn’t come from here at that time. So the United States’ Pluto is going to get three hits. Now this doesn’t always happen when you get a planet returning to where it is in the birth chart. But because of retrograde motion happening in 2022, we’re going to have Pluto pass over where it was in the birth chart for the United States.
Then it’s going to move forward. Then it’s going to come back—back up and run over you like a Mack truck. And then when it ends its retrograde, it’s going to go a third time and say, “Did you get the message?” And it’s in Capricorn.
DR: And what’s the time frame for this?
ANB: I’ll give you the dates. OK, everybody listening, pay attention and notice what’s going on, not only in yourself and your chart but in the world and the nation. Let me get those dates for you. It is exact at 27 degrees, 33 minutes of Capricorn, so check your own chart if you’ve got stuff in those late degrees of Capricorn.
And the exact hits are Feb. 20, then July 11, right after the nation’s birthday when Pluto will be retrograde crossing over the birth chart. And then again the end of 2022: Dec. 28, 2022. It’s a three part saga. It could be quite dramatic, but there is so much reason for hope because Pluto in Capricorn says it’s time to transform structures that aren’t working and processes and ways of doing business that don’t work.
Pluto also gives the silver lining. Pluto was the one everybody had to go leave their riches within the underworld in the ancient myth about Pluto in the underworld. Pluto got really rich. That’s why we hear about “plutocrats.” That’s when people are hoarding money and you see very rich people.
Well, what Pluto’s going to do is come along and say, “This is not OK.” We’ve got to re-set this. We’ve got to re-establish this. We’ve got to do this better. The point being, Pluto not only brings tremendous change and evolution; it also brings riches: spiritually, mystically, as well as potentially on the material plane as well.
So that my point, being keep in mind that the story ain’t over until it’s over. We’ve got a three-part drama going on, and everybody in the United States is being called upon to be part of this adventure. That’s where free will comes in, David, as we talked about. What do we want? That is the biggest question I would like to leave listeners with.
What do you want? And I don’t mean the crummy thing that you sort of have been settling for. What is the most idealistic, fabulous, light-filled, futuristic Aquarian thing that you can think of? Start visualizing it. Because as you conceive it, you can bring it to pass. Things will start to be magnetically brought into your life to help you bring it to pass—if it meets a noble purpose and goal and if it is for the good, not only for yourself or your family, but for everybody, and the planet, and, frankly, the solar system.
So let’s go to it! How exciting is that?
DR: That’s extremely exciting. Wow, what a great way to end the show, too. By the way everybody, this is her website address here: astrologeranne.com. Pretty straightforward. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This is fascinating. I can’t even believe it’s been an hour already. That’s crazy.
ANB: It went so quickly. Oh my goodness.
DR: That means we’re going to have to have you on again.
ANB: Well, how fun, in this exciting year of 2022, right?
DR: Yes, we’re definitely, yeah, we need to schedule you for another day. I have a thousand more questions and curiosities for sure. This is fascinating. Absolutely. I’m eager to see the three Plutonic smacks.
ANB: For everybody tuned in, make sure you go to my website astrolgeranne.com and sign up for my newsletter if you wish, because I will be putting out new horoscopes for every sign at the beginning of 2022 that talk about all this that we’ve talked about tonight and more.
DR: Fantastic. All right. Astrologer Anne, thank you again so much for coming on the Gadfly Show.
ANB: You’re so welcome. I liked being with you.
DR: Great. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in. We see we got a pretty big turnout here. That’s mostly because of your fame, not mine. So this is very cool. Oh wait, I got a comment see, here, hold on. Mary Gapa Hougaard wrote, “A great basic breakdown filled with lots of detail. Loved it!” Okay, well thank you very much, Mary.
Everybody, thanks for tuning in to the Gadfly. I’m your host, David Rych. Until next time, take care of yourself. Bye-bye.
