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Astrologers sometimes get carried away and say that every chart is totally unique. That’s not really true. Obviously it’s possible for two people to be born at the same place and time – or at least close enough that there’s no real practical difference between their charts. Even people born a few days apart, but with the same degrees on their Ascendants, will have extremely similar charts. Their Moons will be in different signs, and that’s important. But much else will be the same.
Naturally as they go through life, such “time twins” will simultaneously experience almost the same transits and progressions. Because of that astrological similarity, we would expect many parallels in their lives – and in fact, we often do see exactly that phenomenon.
Here’s perhaps the most famous of these “time twin” tales:
An ironmonger named Samuel Hemming was born on the same day as the English King, George III – June 4, 1738. They apparently looked very similar and there were many parallels in their lives. Hemming opened his business on the same day that George was crowned king. They married on the same day. They both had the same number and genders of children. They were sick at the same time and they both died on the same day – January 29, 1820 – of similar maladies.
Stories of this sort are fairly abundant. As I was preparing to write this newsletter, I was poking around the internet and followed a link (astrologerpeg.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/time-twins) to a woman who bills herself as “Astrologer Peg.” I don’t know her or what her sources are, but her site mentions that she studied with Noel Tyl, which is a good credential. In any case, I got two particularly dramatic versions of these “time twin” stories from her. I can’t vouch for their accuracy, but I have no reason to doubt it – again, tales such as these are actually very common.
Normally I write two different newsletters each month, one for this website and one for my school. (If you want to keep up with my work at the FCEA, here’s the link: forrestastrology.center.) What follows is a modified version of a school newsletter that appeared a week or so ago. In terms of our understanding of the genesis of evolutionary astrology, this essay feels significant enough that I want to maximize its exposure – that’s why I am breaking with my usual pattern and publishing it on both platforms.
“I always do what the voices in my head tell me what to do.” That’s become a familiar gag line. I don’t want to recommend psychosis as a lifestyle, but recently while rereading Carl Jung’s biography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, I was struck by how much emphasis he puts on trusting cues from the unconscious mind even when they don’t seem to make any rational sense. There’s one such cue that has tugged at me persistently for much of my adult life. It’s the feeling that as I’ve been developing the methodology of evolutionary astrology as I practice it and teach it, that what I was experiencing was more like a process of remembering than one of me actually inventing anything.
There’s a problem though – ostensibly, what we call evolutionary astrology only dates back to the 1970s and 1980s. I was born in 1949. How could I have been “remembering” something that hadn’t been invented yet?
Last May, I taught a class in Athens, Greece, primarily for students in my school. There were many signs and omens that I had some unresolved karma with that country so I approached the trip with some nervousness. I don’t want to be too personal in this essay, but if you want the deep background, go to forrestastrology.center and search for one of my “Master’s Musings” blogs from June 2025 called “What Greece Meant To Me.” The upshot is that there is much indirect evidence from various sources that, in a prior lifetime, I was a Gnostic Christian in that region of the world in the first or second centuries, C.E.
Jupiter entered Cancer on June 9 and it will remain there until it enters Leo on June 29, 2026. In keeping with the planet’s benign reputation, its twelve-year orbit conveniently gives it about one year in each sign.
Traditionally, Jupiter brings luck, and there’s some truth in that notion – with a few provisos. First, what exactly do we mean by luck? During a big Jupiter transit, maybe someone wins a large pile of money. They feel lucky. Everybody calls them lucky. But how happy are they a year later? Did that money actually bring them joy?
Well . . . possibly.
Not to rain on Jupiter’s parade, but one secret with “luck” lies in actually knowing what is good for you. The first obstacle we must overcome in achieving that goal is that everybody thinks they are already there! We all know luck when we see it, right? I mean, how would you feel if you won that lottery? Are you going to give that money back?
Put on your wisdom hat – and you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter if you didn’t have one. Something deep inside you knows that money can bring troubles as well as joy. It’s just hard for us humans to remember that. We get dazzled by glitter sometimes and mistake it for gold. And of course it’s not always about money. There are many other Jupiter “glamours” in this world, ready to beguile us: fame, sex, power – even being widely touted as “a deeply spiritual person.” Every one of those traps can breed attachment and blindness.
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My #1 Nightmare: We’re getting married on Saturday! Is that a good time?
What can I possibly say?
Here, we are entering the realm of electional astrology – the art of choosing the right time to take an action. Astrologically, time weaves an ever-shifting labyrinth of red lights and green lights, but the lights are more often red than green. Bottom line, the odds are long against the happy couple who chose Saturday for their wedding having randomly picked an astrologically encouraging moment. I don’t want to lie to them, but I don’t want to scare them with the truth either. Ever the artful dodger in situations such as that one, I’ll often simply say that I haven’t looked into it, which is generally the reality – I’m not a walking ephemeris. Then I quickly dance away into a fogbank of congratulations and well-wishing.
There are deeper waters here. Let’s say that this couple had actually chosen a totally rotten time to get married – Venus is retrograde in Aries in the 12th house squaring Saturn while the Moon is heading for a final opposition to Uranus in the 7th house. Does this mean that their marriage is doomed? Astrologers who say that kind of thing are simply revealing their inexperience. A lot of factors go into a happy marriage. Some are indeed astrological, and some are in the more obvious categories of love, maturity, and basic sanity. My main point is simple: those virtues can defeat a dreadful wedding-day chart.
