Between the Moon - 13. Lunar Currents: Eclipse Alchemy with Bronwyn Simons

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Lunar Currents is a moonly conversation with April McMurtry and Predictive Astrologer Bronwyn Simmons about embodying the living sky, exploring how astrology helps us enter into the mythic nature of our life story, and musing on our relationship with time, creativity, intuition, and many other magical connections. This episode explores the significance of the eclipse season (October 14th solar eclipse in Libra and Oct 28 lunar eclipse in Taurus) as well as what the lunar nodes may be showing us about the longer arc of our life story.We dive deep into the themes and Bronwyn offers a simple and profound technique for personalizing the degrees of the eclipse towards the end of the show. Links from the episode:Bronwyn Simons Astrologywebsite: https://astrologygoddess.mykajabi.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/moon.wisdom/The Moon Is My CalendarWebsite: https://themoonismycalendar.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/themoonismycalendar/Anne Ortelee Pinball Approachhttps://anneortelee.com/the-pinball-approach-to-understanding-your-natal-energy-flow/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themoonismycalendar.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome, dear listener, to Lunar Currents, a special feature on the Between the Moon podcast, with myself, April McMurtry, and predictive astrologer Bronwyn-Simon-Simonds. Lunar currents is a moonly conversation about embodying the living sky, exploring how astrology helps us enter into the mythic nature of our life story, and musing on our relationship with time, creativity, intuition, and many other magical connections. In this episode, Bronwyn and I explore the themes of the eclipse season and go deep into the significance of the nodes and what they might be trying to tell us about our unfolding life story. This conversation was a lot of fun. It's our first recording together

for lunar currents. And Bronman and I are going to host a free community call for eclipse integration. And anything in this conversation really sparks your interest. And you want to be a part of a beautiful and creative and reflective, thoughtful group to really personalize this eclipse for you to make meaning of it. If you want to find out more, you can sign up for our newsletters or follow us on Instagram. And all of the links are below. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. and we're so grateful that you're here. We're going to jump in to the lunar currents.

I'm April McMurtry with The Moon is My Calendar. Hi, I'm Bronwyn-Simon-Simonds with Bronwyn-Simon-Symons with astrology. So the lunar currents is this conversation about the moon, about our relationship with cycles, about that living sky. Yeah, it seemed really natural for April and I to start having this conversation together because as we've been getting to know each other, we've been realizing how much our work seems to draw

on the same mysterious source and manifest in the world in similar, but yet really compellingly different ways. So this eclipse season seems to just have brought this project right to our doorstep. Truly, I think it was like, I feel like for me there was this, are you going to answer the call or are you just going to like stall or hesitate? Because I feel like there's this movement of almost this testing of the waters of, you know, on the last season of between the moon, we had a conversation that was so beautiful. And then since then I've sort of tested the waters with other things.

And it felt like, are you going to jump in? This is me talking to myself. Or hang out on the shore and just kind of like dip your. toe in. But yeah, this collaboration has been imminent for a while. And that's the funny thing, right, because our charts are actually so different, even though our work and our values and our sort of core vision of time and cycles is so resonant. But that's what makes these conversations fun because we're coming from really different perspectives with the same passion and the same the same values. Yeah. But yeah, I think we've both been sort of flirting with the idea of different

collaborations and both of us feeling maybe a little bit shy. And this eclipse just just brought us brought us to a decision point. Yes. And I was telling April that when she proposed this idea of a monthly conversation, which this will evolve into a monthly conversation, I just felt like I was getting asked out by my crush. I was just so happy to get that invitation. So I'm super, super happy to be here and looking forward to continuing this conversation on a moonly basis. Moonly, on a moonly basis. I love that.

And I'll say it's just, it's so healing for me because there's something around the invitation of inviting, like actually proposing inviting that fear of rejection or that fear of how, you know, how is she going to respond or what if, you know, all these things. But to actually, maybe that's what this eclipse has helped me with of like, that can't stand in the way from what feels like is right there in the heart that wants to come through any of those other layers of past stories of rejection, of anything to do with partnership to actually step into a new relationship, a new dynamic. and it takes courage yeah yeah beautiful so we're recording this still within the eclipse window

the window the portal i don't know if there's other language that you use between the between the eclipses yeah it's between the eclipses we are in the in between it really always feels like that. No matter what the story of the eclipse season is, right, whether we come in with kind of a bang with the solar eclipse, which is usually like the narrative is shaped by the luminary that we start with, right? When we start with the lunar eclipse in that season, it comes in emotional and slow. And when we start with the sun, usually comes in as a big event. You know, it won't be a big dramatic event in everybody's life, but it's something outward. So here we are suddenly in this space.

And we're recording a few days out from that lunar eclipse. So we're still very much in the process of experiencing before we get to assimilate and digest. Yeah. And just to sort of highlight, because this is something I didn't know, really within eclipse studies of, oh, they come in pairs. Okay, that's an understanding. And sometimes there's more, but there's always a pair. Right. And so for anyone who's listening, who hasn't delved as deeply into the eclipse world or the inner workings of eclipses that they do come in pairs, like they're always paired.

And sometimes that pair does, like you mentioned, starts with the lunar eclipse and then the second one is the solar. But these ones, October 14th, that started the solar eclipse in Libra or started with the solar eclipse, then is the closing. out with the lunar eclipse. And thankfully, because of the intensity of this eclipse season, we just have the two this time. There's often only two, sometimes quite often also. There's, there are three, and then for rare occasions, there can be as many as five eclipses in an eclipse season. So it's nice when it's a shorter one and you just have to, that brings its own challenges, right? Because we have to kind of do that emotional work rapidly and let things manifest rapidly. But here we are. Yeah, and that narrative is different with this.

The sun kind of brings in the events and then we have the in-between time to begin to integrate them emotionally. And then it's like outer events that bring emotional resolution, whereas if you start with the moon, it starts from the inside. And we have the emotional event that then manifests as something outward by the end of the eclipse season with that solar eclipse. So it's always a dance. Yeah. And then it gives us a break or a breather that, like you mentioned, that time of integration, then we'll have six months or six cycles before the next ones come. So it's almost like this break in the waves of like here's, and here we are talking of lunar

currents and just even that water, right, of like, here's the swell. Like, here's the swell. And then that swell sort of subsides or dissipates and then gathers back up again. And I think for this conversation, just exploring like this particular eclipse to reflect on and sort of gather any insight then that can be applied and personalized. Yeah. To then look forward to, okay, how can I know that in six months, again, that these eclipses that there'll be another opportunity. Yeah. to deepen that relationship, to deepen that understanding, to see the events in our own life.

Like, right, this is, there's personal and then there's the collective on the global stage. But in this personal way, I'm wondering if you want to start with, we can start with the signs and how we relate to those and where we might personalize those within our own life and then kind of within our own chart, the places they may. maybe playing out, taking place. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes the personalization of it gets lost, especially with, there's a lot of drama around eclipse seasons.

And we're usually, because of the global impact, we usually are seeing drama in the world around us. Sometimes there's sometimes, as astrologers, we're kind of prone to the catastrophic and the dramatic. So sometimes what you're hearing on social media can be very dramatic. There's the complexity of eclipse theory. and in all of that, our own personal lives and the small but beautiful and important transformations that we might be experiencing sometimes get lost. And it's hard to know how to get the astrology

to talk to us about that. And that's the most important thing is playing with the symbolism of your own life and your experience of yourself. Yes, it'll be a turning point, but obviously every eclipse isn't going to be a huge drama in everybody's life. We don't do that every six months. So how do you know how important will this be? How big of an outward turning point? What should I be looking at in my life? What can I expect?

And starting with the signs and the sign axis is that even before we think about the houses in the chart, but it does relate directly to that. If you know your chart well enough to know, what do you have in Ares Libra? And this eclipse is beginning a series of eclipse seasons that will happen on the Ares Libra axis, because that's where the nodes are. In that idea of like the overlapping waves, right, we're also ending out a couple of years of having the eclipses in Taurus Scorpio. And although the nodes have moved on, in this season we're having our very last eclipse in Taurus that we'll have for nine years. And so that, just to pause there, right, the timing of these larger cycles, that there's these seasons of eclipses every six months are repeating.

And then about a year and a half chapter with the nodes, with the place where those orbits of the moon and the ecliptic where they overlap, that those chapters last for about a year and a half. so that there's an unfolding and makes it, in my experience, like, that much more worthwhile to pay attention because it's not just this passing, oh, it's an eclipse in this sign, and the next one's a different sign. Like, we're actually working with something that's unfolding over a long, much longer period of time. So that nine years, the nodes will be north and south will be flipped. Yeah. And then double that for 18 years will be back to these same eclipse axis. So that gives us the ability to look back on a chapter to see what might have the themes been in our life then to this present moment.

And then I'm not there yet to look nine, you know, nine or 18 years down the road. Like the future part of it is. Yeah. A lot to take in. Yeah, those cycles get very complex because there's many cycles that layer on top of each other with eclipses. But on the simplest level, we're talking about the dance between the sun and the moon, which is what we're always talking about with the lunar phases. And there comes a time in that annual dance where they meet up, like you said, on the ecliptic, which is the apparent path of the sun. So it's when the moon lines up visually with the sun and symbolically in a more dramatic way. than she does with every new moon and full moon, because every new moon and full moon is an alignment like that. But when they come together both on the ecliptic, that's when we get an eclipse.

And the nodes that we're always talking about, for those that may not be familiar, the nodes are not bodies in space, but rather those mathematical and sensitive symbolic points where the moon meets the sun on the ecliptic, or more specifically, where the moon meets the path of the sun. They're always moving through our charts. Some astrological traditions treat them as bodies, as planets, because on an energetic level,

they do carry a lot of weight. They're mysterious and sensitive and powerful and speak to our deepest desires, our ability to manifest, our ability to release, and our life path. When you get our two lights meeting on the place that changes our life path, half, things happen. And that longer year and a half cycle gives us time, like you were saying, April time to, this isn't our only eclipse on the Ares Libra axis. We're being challenged to work with our relationships.

And that doesn't happen in one two week series of events. Yeah. What might be happening for people now is that you may be feeling that there's an important, a significant relationship in your life that's up for transformation of some kind. Because that's what we do in Ares Libra. We consider our relationships. We consider the needs of the self-Ares and the needs of the pairing, the other, the self and other, Libra. So that's what we're being challenged to do.

Starting with an event around the pairing, the other and the self, and ending with, this is where it gets a little sticky because it doesn't. with Ares the self, it ends with Taurus. So what we're actually doing is doing an emotional integration of everything that we've been working with around our own psychological growth, Torres Scorpio, over the last two years. So that's done now. And we're starting to apply it to our relationships. Mm. Mm. At time. Right. And even when you said the psychological growth, I was also feeling the and the value and the worth

of what I bring to relationship, right? Of what I bring to, like, who I'm in partnership with and how I'm, you know, sharing and showing up, not necessarily even showing up, but like what it is I have to offer that I'm bringing, that I bring forth. That's beautiful. And that's so key because these are Venus world eclipses,

both of them. We had the one in Libra and this next one in Tori, So we are, it's exactly what we're talking about is the value that we bring. And the value that we perceive ourselves as bringing, how do we value ourselves relationally and how does that express? And that's going to feel different for us than it did two and a half years ago before we entered into that long, seemingly long. And speaking as somebody with lots of Torres Scorpio, it was a long season of Torres Scorpio

eclipses where we we had to we all had to dig deep in our torus scorpio houses and think about what psychological changes we needed to make kind of test out that new self in relationship with others and that's hard work yeah it's super rewarding but those venusian those venusian keywords about value and harmony those are up front with this yeah when you mentioned so this sort of between where the node is and the full moon is. And I even had this little like scramble in my brain around, wait, did the node go back into Taurus? Because I know the nodes are always in the like the retrograde like moving backwards to the signs. I'm like, did it go back and then forward again?

And so how to have like the moment of the full moon. this moment of the moon in Taurus. And yet it's so close to that border with Aries that there is this kind of straddling of those two. And yeah, I love how you are bringing in the, okay, it's not like it's one last chance. But it's like here's this like full reflection. And it just helps to feel into how Taurus, you know, feeds into Aries of when we know our value and our worth. and what we bring to a relationship, then we can embody that Aries with a sense of self,

like a sense of self that is anchored in all of the work that's available to do with Taurus. And then to bring that into relationship rather than somehow outside, you know, that it happens within the dynamic that Ares is not separate from Libra, that those that axis, that 180 across, We're looking at each other. And sometimes I think of like, oh, if there was a spectrum, like there's one end and this other end. But what if those ends are actually that the spectrum is a circle rather than a line? Yeah.

They're always in their interdependent. And that actually is the keyword that I use for that Ares Libra axis is that the axis of interdependence because it's all about relationship, that axis. And if you're thinking just in terms of what, I mean, think in terms of Libra, you think relationship, but if you think areas, you don't really go there. But this is why, and we were talking about this before we came on, too, that importance of not isolating just the one house or the one sign, but understanding that they're always in conversation and collaboration with that sister sign or that sister house across the way, that it's not a duality. well, I guess technically it is a duality, but the developmental challenge is to find the synthesis

of these two things that appear to be very different, but are actually addressing the same issues of life. Ariz and Lieber both address relationship in really, really different ways. And you can't Aries all your relationships, and you can't Libra all your relationships, that either of those approaches is going to bring you to grief one way or another. But when you find the synthesis, the sum that's greater than the, what is that saying? the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. You put Aries and Leipar together and the synthesis, the alchemy that happens is the learning, and that's the learning of any full moon, but a full moon eclipse really, really ripens that.

Again, this is a little bit different because we're combining two axes. And to your point about that, that can only happen when the nodes first enter a new set of signs, confused by the fact that they enter it backwards that are going in when the, so they're in late Libra Ares. They've just entered that sign. And then we have the moon that's in early Taurus. So it's still close enough to the nodes

that we get that hybrid effect if it's straddling. It's not rare. It happens pretty often after the nodes change signs. And I think it is that like that crossing of the waters that really gives us a chance to fully, integrate the last cycle. Yeah. It's almost like there's the clockwise and the counterclockwise,

the direction of the nodes, and then the direction that the sun and the moon are moving in, that the nodes are. Yeah. To me, it just, it speaks to, and it, again, this, this integration of if it's just one direction, there isn't a, there, the nodes gives us the, like, in any retrograde, but just that's the movement of,

of the nodes always. They're always in the other direction. I did want to highlight that too because of what you said about the movement from Taurus to Ares because that's like nodal thinking. We think of the signs from Aries to Pisces as this and they are this elegant developmental cycle, right? That follows that path that goes Aries, Taurus and the Taurus Gemini, Gemini Cancer. and the notes turn that upside down. They reverse it. So we're developing in a different way. And it kind of subverts the relationship between the signs.

And I loved what you said about taking the self-value that we learn in Taurus and applying it to how we assert ourselves in relationship in Aries. Normally we think of the cycle, the developmental urge at that point being ARIS, Aries fully knowing the self and then moving into valuing self in the world with Taurus. But this is the nodes and it's why they're tricky. They take everything and reverse it and they reverse our approach to our life path and they amp up the challenge, the developmental challenge because we have to look at things in it. Yeah, in that retrograde fashion, right, that magical backwards.

British shins. Yeah, in that, like, write that reversal of roles. And so I even, in this last eclipse, that feeling of, oh, the sun becomes the moon. That there's this becoming of the other, that the opposite or that thing that seems like the other or the separate, that because the moon is just lined up to sort of pass in front of, there's this. almost like a, I mean, some people have called it like an inversion, right, of that, that upside downness. But there's like a becoming like, oh, let me actually step into your shoes and see what it's like to walk in your shoes as the sun sort of walks, the moon walks in the sun shoes or, you know,

depending on which eclipse it is. And so when that's in this nodal axis and with Libra, the question that's been on my heart is like can everyone's needs be met in our own relationships, but in the world's scale of like countries and communities and people, we have this need to like live and to thrive and can everyone's needs met or is it this like this either or conflict and clash where there's such a destructive element, which feels like the Ares energies can go towards that. I'm going to get my needs met and I'm going to like, you know, topple and blaze through anything that's in my way.

So, yeah, I think that's just been that question of, can everyone, can everyone have their needs met? And when is that possible? How is that possible? In what ways do we enter into relationships where we, that's almost like that's the setup for how we're entering in is it's not the either or either I'm going to get. what I want or, you know, yeah, that's how I have been feeling about the unintegrated

Ares Libra. And it's the drama of cyclical time, right, where we get, we get to ask this question again and again, is it possible? Can everyone's needs be met? we're not going to answer that this eclipse season obviously but we have that opportunity opportunity and I'm putting all of these in quotes um to ask that question again and again and it's it brings up that bigger question of whether this spiral of time that we're in is an evolutionary spiral or if it's real and we look at what happens in the world and it starts us to look like that more neelistic vision of just a wheel that turns and doesn't progress.

Eclipse bring up those big, it's those big unanswerables that we still have to keep striving to answer on a personal level and that we can. They're unanswerable on a global scale maybe, but they're not unanswerable on a personal level. Can all of our needs be met? Well, we do still keep working on that, right? In our intimate relationships in our communities, and we strive for that. It keeps us going. That's the Venusian piece of this.

Yeah. And the other fascinating thing about eclipses is that it's not just, this isn't like, eclipses don't happen on every planet. If we imagine another Earth somewhere, another sentient place, It's peculiarity. Sorry.

Let's see eclipses. Things are springing to life around me. It's a peculiarity of this place that we live. A really magical peculiarity where the disc size of these two luminaries, little old moon, who's our faithful companion, that little mystery that follows us through every day and night, is visually the same size as that awe-inspiring and monstrous thing, the size of power of which we can't even really take in.

And when they do meet up visually, it changes our consciousness. It's one of those oddities that defines, I think, the nature of this particular existence, It's why we've chosen to embody here, what are the karmic lessons of living in this place that seems to be painfully 50-50 a lot of the time. There's so much polarity, so much black and white, so much of a feeling that life is just that it never really falls to good or bad. It's just always, that's the beauty of this place that we've chosen to live. And it's also what brings a heartache as well.

And the eclipses remind us of that, too. It's really just all of the big philosophical questions. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, even like, and then bringing it down to Earth and just that size. And when you're describing this, you know, this our faithful companion of the moon and the unfathomably giganticness of the sun, when you're describing that, that the feeling that I got was, oh, the tiny and as the mighty. like all of the small things and all the small acts and like how small the moon is compared to the sun to actually come into presence and seem as big as. And so I just wonder, you know, in this conversation and for everyone who is listening

and that feeling of like sometimes that feeling of like, well, I'm just the moon. I'm just like the tiny otherwise sometimes invisible or not like, I don't even know what the word is. It's not about getting credit. It's not about any of that other than the sheer feeling of like the smallness in the face of something like the sun, where there is this moment where that is completely, that is flipped. Yeah, it's a complete reversal. And you see that tiny thing able to create or obliterate light with the same. Actually, with a power that the sun doesn't have.

That's lunar consciousness too. It's like not what you think it is. Yeah. Well, I wonder if there's just with personalizing the eclipses. Right. The questions that are there, the sort of the key elements of Libra and Ares, and that this cycle of eclipses started earlier this year in the spring. So spring of 2023. If anyone wants to look back to that, you know, specific date to see, again, when we practice this self-study in relationship with cycles, we can kind of take note of conversations that we might be having or just things that come up to the surface sometimes with that time and distance in the rearview mirror.

It's like, oh, that was actually really significant. It might not have seemed so at the time. But looking back to the new moon in April was the solar. the April 19th solar eclipse in Aries that kind of kicked off and brought us into, initiated us into this season with these, this axis. And then we have up until. We just have two more eclipse seasons with the nodes in Ares Libra. So we've got next spring and next fall.

And then by the time we get to spring of 2025, the nodes will be off into Bergo. Right. I'm thinking backwards. You have to think backwards. It's that pausing to think backwards. And really, sometimes my mind will get, will get scrambled. And that's not necessarily a bad thing because it's a reorienting of.

Yeah. Yeah. The personalizing sort of feeling into this chapter and even maybe feeling like if there are conversations that want to be initiated, these are both cardinal signs. I mean, it's a time of initiating into a relationship or initiating, or initiating change or asserting oneself in some way in partnerships. This gives us that support and maybe the, I'm like using my hands like the boost, the. Yeah.

There is something about the cardinal signs that are like that fuel or boost or catalyzing. Yeah, something that gives. I like that. It's a boost. It really is. I was going to say a push. Sometimes push feels like against your will. somebody pushes me in the pool is like, well, I didn't want that. But if someone gives me the boost,

I want to climb the tree. And then they're like boosting me up the tree. And so I can reach up higher because I'm getting a boost. And if we're honest, any clips can be either a push or a boost. It does get amplified by it being in cardinal signs. But there's another little way to kind of get incited and think about it in terms of your own life, even if you don't know your chart at all. and that is using the degrees. The degrees in your natal chart relate to years of the first 30 years of your life. So when you have planetary placements at certain degrees, you can think about the story of that year in your life.

And with these eclipses, they will trigger things that you have at five. That's the lunar eclipse in Taurus. Even if you really don't know the degrees that things are in your chart, you can just think about your life. What was the big story that was when you were five years old in your family that is up and relevant for the emotional integration that you're doing right now? Every eclipse is a drama, but it's not always a drama in your life and chart. And sometimes you're the person standing on the sidelines with the water bottles and the towels,

just helping those of us who have, you know, big placements in beginning of tourists. and we're almost done working with those or mid-Ares Libra. And that's, it's so fascinating. And I haven't heard that way of, right? So just even pausing with the degrees, referring to each sign, each of the 12 signs breaks down into, starting from zero to 21, that each of those is marked off and each planet moves through those degrees

at a different rate. And so, for example, this helped me to understand is like, oh, the sun moves about one degree every day. There's about, you know, there's 30 degrees. And so that gives this solar month time. Those degrees, those numbers in our own birth chart then are fixed the day that you're born, the sun was in a particular degree. And that's that degree of the sun. And what you're talking about is the degree of the nodes.

So the solar eclipse, the node was at. Was it 15 Libra? No, I'm second guessing myself. I pulled that from my memory, which is I have Saturday. The new moon was at the 21 degrees Libra, October 14th. I don't know where I got 15. That's not this. Yes, sorry, you're right.

That's a story from 21 years old. So where am I getting 15? I don't know. Just me being wrong. I have Saturday's spices. And it happens sometimes. Yeah. Well, this is what is helpful.

21-year story that you're thinking about from the perspective of the Libra solar eclipse. And then five is, so we're talking about the degree of the luminaries. Of the sun and the moon. And neither of them are total solar or lunar eclipses because the node would, otherwise the node would be right on that same number because everything would line up. And it would be the full on full eclipse. And so when those, the nidal degrees off from the sun or the moon, then it's not total. So 21 degrees Libra. And that was part of my other, like I got, this is what I got scrambled with, is the eclipse a Taurus eclipse or is it an Ares eclipse?

Because which is determining, right? Is it the node that determines it? Or is it the degree that the moon is at determines it? And so I feel like that's that place of holding the both and of it is both. Yeah, it's a Taurus moon. Yeah. But it's a hybrid eclipse. It's both.

It's Aries Taurus. And I loved the way you summed up the developmental challenge of that. And it does move in both directions. From that, defining the self helps us define our values, Ares to Taurus. What you said about how we're, say it again, that was so good. about the movement from Taurus to Ares Libra. Values helps us to express ourselves and learn to meet our needs in relationship

to tie it back to what you were saying about everyone's needs being met. Whether it's the collective or the partner or the other of like, this is what I bring to the table, to the conversation. And then how do I hold my own? How can I hold my own within partnership? Well, some of that comes from like, my time is valuable too.

My effort is valuable too. And that can help me to hold my own when that's not there. That's part of my value. Yeah. Well, I love this conversation exploration. And for anyone who's listening, hopefully you have followed along. I know for me, numbers, my brain, how does it describe sometimes like having Velcro, like things that will stick?

Even my own passwords or someone could tell me their password. And I'm like, you don't have to worry about. me breaking in because I won't remember. I won't remember that number. So that's, that's been my fun sort of number challenges, is working within astrology to find a way to anchor in and ascribe and give and feel meaning around like a degree or a number and personalizing it to that year of our life is one way to do that. Right. If like just oh, 21 degrees Libra, what does that mean? But to enter into our own. life story into that year and just to see what might have what lessons in partnership and relationship

might have been there that want to be reviewed and come up for a you know have a different light shown on them yeah and you can if you do know your chart you can look to that not just that degree in Libra but you can just look to 21 in your chart and because anything that you have around that 20, 21, 22 is going to be triggered. And just as an aside about that, a really beautiful exercise to do when you have some time to just sit with your chart. And all you need is the degree numbers for this. You don't need to be an astrologer, really understand everything about the chart. Every number degree that you see that your planets sit at is going to be between zero and 29. and you can do a little self-autobiography there.

And because what you're going to see as you look through those degrees is significant years, a story, a narrative that is built on significant experiences at certain years. This is an assignment I like to give to my ongoing clients is to sit with those degrees, write out the stories, especially if you do spend time with your chart, this is going to give you a document that helps you to understand, because sometimes it takes a little bit of digging into your psyche and memory. You might say, I don't really have a story from 21 years old, but then when you really go back and think about it,

this isn't necessarily against, not necessarily a big drama, but something significant that altered your path. And once you have that story of each of those degrees, then you know, like when I say there is an eclipse at, five degrees or there's, you know, we've got, you know, just name anything that's happening in the sky at a particular degree. We have Pluto at 29. You have that memory. Okay. That's the part of my life that's being triggered right now. It gives you a new way to familiarize yourself with your own story. And a really much more personal way to relate to some of these transits can come and go and you're

like, I don't know how that relates to my life. But if we say like Mercury is stationing at 11 degrees, like, okay, that's going to bring up my story from 11 years old. It's going to speak to my Pluto at 11 degrees. And I ask where that like sort of origins of that practice or that. Thank you because I'm one and on where I learned this. This is from Anne Orteley. And she calls it the pinball method.

And her iteration of it is more complex and sophisticated than what I'm explaining. You can do a lot more with the relationships between the planets as we move from one degree to the next. There's ways to flesh out that story. I'm just giving you kind of the bare bones version of it. But if that really intrigues you and you want to learn more about that, you can go and take the class, Anne has a recorded class on her website called the pinball method. She also has a little obstacle on her website. Anne has a brilliant mind.

I feel like she's the most brilliant predictive astrologer working today. And she has a background in programming. And you can see that programmer's mind at work in that the number play, the magical number play that comes from her Virgo. And then also just the programmer's mind. So of course, I always do my own

sort of symbolic narrative take on things. So I've sort of simplified. it and given people this method as a way of looking at their own story. And because this is what interests me is how our chart tells our story and how it can help us to understand the mythic nature of our own life story. So that's relatively simple, although, you know, emotionally big process of just sitting with those numbers, what happened to me at four, what happened to me at 11, what happened to me at 21 gives you a document that's going to help you make sense of the astrology as it

comes and goes. So it isn't just theoretical. Yeah. It isn't scary. It's relatable. And you see how it speaks to your life story every time. Every transit will in a bigger little way speak to you in your life story. But yeah, that comes from Anne Ortley. Okay.

And we'll put the link. So if people want to follow that link, I feel like I have my chart in front of me and it just all of a sudden, like, made stuff to life in a whole, in a whole new way. And I feel like this is why I love talking to you and being in conversation is like the mythic nature. Like, and getting a, there's this chance of a further unpacking of like, yes, that was the dynamic or that was the event or that was, you know, I have to put my chart away because all of a sudden things are coming to life. It really brings it home. It really brings it home. It can help you with other things too.

Like we were talking earlier about like how long to run a class for and I use my pinball to do that. I know that once I get to 11 of anything, it's going to get tough because that's where my Pluto lives. So there's lots of ways to use this. I'm a practical tourist and I like astrology that we can use in our daily life. So I love that. And I think, yeah, this is Anne pioneered this. And I think that ultimately it's based on solar arcs and solar arc theory, but this is an application that Anne came up with. All right. Well, this is beautiful, beautiful homework, play work, lifetime work to be in relationship with these movements and give even having more meaning with working with the numbers in that

magical way of getting to like revisit and retell stories and and have a review and then be able to move forward and try maybe you know the things that are like well that didn't really work last time so I get a chance to like what would be another what's another approach and that's that's the beautiful use of cyclical time we get infinite chances but it's nice if we can use those chances to move, to move the needle a little bit. Yeah. Well, I have loved this conversation. I'm so glad that this feels like wanted to initiate itself. And so thank you for showing up. And I'm going to thank myself for showing up. Yeah. And I'm going to thank you for showing up. And I'm going to thank you for the Aries energy that it took to issue the invitation that I could then from my 12th house place.

to respond, yeah. And it brings you forward to next month, next moonth. Yeah. So these lunar currents coming to you from our lunar consciousness. And if you love these conversations, let us know. And, yeah, if there's things that, even questions that come up, if you want to reach out to either Bronwyn or myself through the website, each of our own websites, if you wanted to mention how people can find you

the best way to get in touch. Bronwynsymons.com or at moon.witwisdom on Instagram. I'm on YouTube a lot more. You can look for Bronwyn-Simon-Simon's astrology there. Any of those places. You can talk to me, ask me questions. I love hearing from you guys. And I'm excited for what is to come.

And we will share opportunities for anyone who wants to connect and learn more from us, with us? Yeah. This is, yeah, this is the beginning. And we actually do have one other little collaboration coming up before the next podcast together. And I would just drop a line about that. And if you're on either or both of our mailing lists, which you should be on both of them,

we'll let you know more about this. But we're going to get together for a free community call on Eclipse integration, which is just be safe, sacred space to share our eclipse experiences and begin to digest them. There's a good tourist word. Digest together. Information about that, I think via both of our emails and our Instagram, but get on the list and you'll be the first to know. Yes. All right.

Well, thank you, everyone who's joined us. And thank you again, Bronwyn. And we'll see you next time for the lunar currents. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with a friend, all the things to help it reach more people who will benefit in some meaningful way. I'm April and I'll be with you next time on Between the Moon.