Blog
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.
Sometimes it’s good to be wrong. I used to get up on my high horse about the spiritual emptiness of Zoom events. My favorite line was that human relationships could not be reduced to an audio track and a video track – that if all we have are those two channels, something precious and intangible was missing. I still believe that there is truth in that attitude, but I’ll admit I’ve had to eat my words. Through my work with my online school, various podcasts, and some other collaborations, I now feel close in a genuinely soulful way with some people I have never actually met, at least not in the flesh.
The surprise for me is that despite my initial attitude, those sweet psychic tendrils of human connection seem capable of heart-to-heart piggybacking over computer screens. I was wrong and I admit it.
Still, there is much to be said for a hug. There’s much to be said for eye-contact. There’s much to be said for idle chit chat and just getting to know each other in a human way. Vibes come through with a lot more multidimensional punch when two people are in the same room. I do miss all of that primeval bonding.
My old apprenticeship groups were very tribal. Lasting friendships formed. There were affairs. A marriage or two happened. There were conflicts, along with some inappropriate behavior that had to be handled. There were tragedies and there were deaths – and even those kinds of sorrows bond people together. That’s all part of how we create community. I believe that every one of us learned a lot from those human experiences, especially when we all peered at them together through the lens of astrology – and maybe sat around later over a glass of wine yacking and gossiping about them.
