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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artificial intelligence – does it spell evil hyper-intelligent machines deciding that humanity’s messy days on Earth need to come to an end? Or will it give us the cure for cancer, effective environmental solutions, and warp drive to carry us to the stars? I don’t know, you don’t know – and neither do the legions of boosters and doomsayers who claim that they know.  Here’s a far smaller question: what will AI mean for astrology in particular? I don’t know the answer there either, but I’m asked about it quite a lot, so for what they are worth, here are my thoughts.  I see both positive and negative potentials as AI transforms the way we practice our craft. And transform it, it will – the one certainty is that, barring a total collapse of civilization, artificial intelligence is here to stay. We have to learn to live with it. I also believe that if we, as a society, are successful in coexisting with this new technology, that success will not rest on technological breakthroughs. It will rest on cultural, social, and legal decisions. More about that in a while. What I plan to do as I explore this explosive topic with you is to bounce back and forth between pro-AI perspectives for astrology and negative ones. If you love AI, I’ll say some things you’ll hate. And if you hate it, I will say some things you’ll love. In the end, my aim is not to act as if I know the answer and arrive at some phony thumbs up or thumbs down bottom line – that would be nothing but an empty gesture, as if I were approving or disapproving of gravity. Again, I don't know where all of this will lead. All I know for sure is that AI is not going to disappear. We just have to learn how to live with it. And please – no mean emails.

So there I was, just twenty-three months old and the King of the World. I had a pair of doting giants trained to meet my every need. One whimper and I instantly became the center of the universe. But trouble was brewing in paradise and I knew it. My mother had entered her second trimester, pregnant with The Interloper: my sister Jan was on the way and my kingdom would soon be ripped in half.    Right on schedule, Mars was returning to where it was on the day I was born. I was embattled and ready to kill somebody if only my body were coordinated enough to pull it off. Welcome to the infamous “Terrible Twos.”   In broad terms, Mars takes twenty-six months to return to a given zodiacal degree – just over two years in other words. Due to several factors, the cycle is somewhat variable. One of those factors is that, in common with the rest of the planets, Mars’ orbit is elliptical – it speeds up when it’s closer to the Sun and slows down as it gets further away. Ditto for Earth, of course – and we’re watching Mars from our own careening planet, so our perspective is always shifting. Because of retrograde motion, sometimes Mars makes not one but three conjunctions to its natal position. All of those wild cards complicate the timing. It’s a mess, but say twenty-six months, give or take two or three months, and your timing of Mars returns will be more or less on target. My own first Mars return, for one example, occurred after only twenty-three months and ten days. The bottom line is that you have to look it up.

“As above, so below” – those four familiar words are really the heart of astrology. What happens above us in the sky is mirrored here on earth below. That’s true both in terms of events and also in terms of the seasons of our own minds and hearts. We astrologers normally apply that principle in practical terms by watching the planets dance with each other as they flow through through the twelve zodiacal signs. That system works very well and has helped people navigate their lives for at least two or three millennia. But are we missing anything? Is there anything else that’s happening “above” and thus impacting us all here below? Maybe something that we’ve been ignoring? Questions such as those are what keeps astrology from growing stale, but knowing how to ask them involves more than just keeping an open mind. Sometimes it’s about discovering something “up there” that we simply were not in a position to notice any earlier. Would it be fair to criticize 16th century master astrologer John Lilly for failing to include Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto in his interpretations? Obviously not – no one back then even knew that those three planets existed. Still, they were certainly “above” – and if our basic astrological theory holds true, then down here below, we were affected by them.  Little did he know it, but William Lilly in fact died with Uranus making a station on his natal Pluto.

When your world is lit up with squares and oppositions, sleeping through sextiles happens almost automatically. With hard aspects, your foot is in the fire. You’re highly motivated to act, in other words. Softer aspects aren’t nearly as pressing. You can think of them more as opportunities than as demands.  Still, missed opportunities are actually huge events. It’s just that they are often disguised as nothing at all. Imagine walking right past a hundred dollar bill lying on the sidewalk while looking the other way. Imagine feeling too tired to go to the party where your future soulmate is waiting for you.  Nothing happened? Ask your guardian angels . . .

“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.  True or not, the problem still remains: how could I have experienced anything like evolutionary astrology almost two thousand years ago? At first there seems to be no rational support for such a notion. But as strange as it may seem, I have come to believe that a Gnostic in the Roman Empire culture of the second century C.E. would actually find much that was familiar in the work that we contemporary evolutionary astrologers are doing today, at least at the philosophical level.

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.