hey, my name is Chris Brennan, and today I want to talk about astrology as the art of knowing when not to act. So I've been thinking about this a lot recently, partially after I did the episode on Ronald Reagan's use of astrology in the White House in the 1980s. And one of the things that um he did, one of the things that the astrologer who advised him, whose name was Joan Quigley, is during the Iran-Contra Scandal, quickly advised him not to say and not to do anything during that time period, and especially to not give any press conferences. And I think that's really interesting because it reminded me that that's actually part of a longstanding tradition in the astrological tradition going all the way back to the Mesopotamian tradition, which is that um when you're using electional astrology or using astrology in general, while sometimes you're using it in order to know when to do things and in order to pick auspicious dates in order to launch different Ventures and undertakings.

looking for positive astrological alignments that look like they might be good for launching something at that time. Like, let's say, for example, today there's a Venus-Jupiter sextile. So, one of the reasons I'm recording this video is because I wanted to take advantage of that auspicious alignment that's happening today. But that's only half of the piece of using astrology. The other half of the piece is knowing when not to act or when not to initiate actions or to do things because the astrological alignments are not favorable during that time. And because they're indicative of launching something and then potentially failing or potentially getting into trouble or having things turn out in a way that is worse than what you wanted ideally. And astrology can sometimes tell you that because we know both from a mundane standpoint when you're just looking at the planetary alignments that are happening in a given month. Like, for example, over the past week, we've had this Mars-Uranus conjunction that's been happening in Taurus, and there's just been all of this

chaotic stuff happening in the world like the biggest IT outage just happened yesterday that has ever happened in history. We've had like assassination attempts, we've had the president getting sick, and just all sorts of craziness taking place in different parts of the world under this Mars Uranus alignment. In our monthly podcast on electional astrology, we had warned people that this was going to be a chaotic week as a result of that Mars Uranus conjunction. So we tried to work around it and to schedule and tell people to launch things earlier in the month rather than later in the month as a result of that. Part of it is paying attention to what the alignments are that are happening in the sky at any given time and knowing if they look kind of challenging or knowing if they look more favorable. So that's a huge part of things, it's just paying attention to what the astrological weather is like in general as being more conducive to certain types of actions and less conducive to others. So another way that

you can approach things as an astrologer is knowing what your transits are. So during some time periods, you're going to be having positive transits that are indicating like growth and expansion and success. Whereas during other times, you're going to be having more challenging transits that are going to indicate that you might run into obstacles or not be as successful or have setbacks in what you're trying to accomplish. So obviously during those times, you're going to want to act when you're having more positive transits versus sometimes if you're having extremely negative transits you may want to withhold acting during those time periods and to be more inactive or to say no to things rather than yes. So I think that's so interesting though and even though this is like obvious and like common knowledge in some sense I think it's worth thinking about and almost sort of like meditating on the concept of what it's like to not act and because it's not always the easiest thing because sometimes you'll be having

things happening in your life, and something will happen, and you'll feel like you need to act, that you need to do something in that moment to address that situation, to fix things, or maybe you feel like starting something at that time. And naturally, all other factors aside, you might go ahead and do so because it seems appropriate at that moment. But then in some instances, the astrology at the time will kind of be screaming at you and telling you, No, this is actually a challenging time, or this is a dangerous time, or this is a time that's problematic for some reason, according to the astrology, even if you're not seeing it or you're not aware of how that time period might be problematic for you in some way. And what'll happen is, sometimes I've had the experience where sometimes I'll just say, you know, Screw the astrology. I don't see why this should be problematic at all, and I'll go ahead and do what I felt like doing in that moment. But then immediately I'll run into trouble.

run into push back. I'll come into unexpected challenges or obstacles, or the thing that I launched will be thwarted in some way. So, as an astrologer, I think we have those experiences over and over again enough that eventually we learn that you really do want to try to do things on more auspicious dates and to avoid doing things on more inauspicious dates. And in some ways, you eventually come to this period of needing to learn how to trust the astrology, to trust what the astrology is saying, because often times it's giving you a much more objective uh vantage point on events than you can have in terms of your subjective experiences in that moment. Um, that was actually something that Robert Zer always told me, and for a long time I was very skeptical of it, where he says he said something like the astrology is always right, um, and I was always um hesitant of that of what he was saying in terms of that because I know that sometimes astrologers in their ability to interpret the astrology because it's so

complex can sometimes be wrong, or sometimes be mistaken, or led astray. Um, but I think as I've gotten older over the years, in the almost two decades since he, he said that to me, I've come to learn, the sort of come to realize the wisdom of that, that the astrology often is objectively true, and it's telling you something that will be true about the future, but you just may not have the vantage point to fully appreciate it at that moment in time. But as a result of that, I think there's this inherent tension between sometimes what the astrology says versus what we want to do. And ultimately, much of the time, um, it's hard to just accept what the astrology says if it's telling you not to act at that moment because it goes against your internal predisposition to sort of like exercise your free will and just do what you want to do when it feels right to do it. So when you run into that, though, sometimes the challenge is to cultivate this property of inaction of not initiating.

action at that time, and withholding action, which I think is kind of like a Saturnian um thing. It's a Saturnian archetype because Saturn has to do with discipline, but Saturn also, its significations have to do with negating things or rejecting things or saying no to things, and sometimes the rejection is the rejection of acting in that moment. So it's something that doesn't always come easy to everyone though, and that you have to train yourself to do, but I think it's a very valuable skill for astrologers to learn um because ultimately you can be more successful in the long run if you learn how to cultivate that. So obviously there's exceptions to that and you can run into issues if you go to the Other Extreme end of the spectrum where it's just like you never do anything on any sort of even moderately challenging Transit because you're scared about a negative outcome. Obviously that can have major pitfalls and can be problematic for a whole host of reasons, so I'm not necessarily recommending that.

sometimes when you're having difficult transits, you do have to just lean into it and accept that. Like, for example, sometimes when people have surgery, you'll see them having Mars transits, and sometimes they'll be nervous about that. But sometimes that's necessary because you're literally having your body cut open at that time, which in and of itself takes into account or encompasses the symbolism of having a Mars Transit at that time. Because something, to some extent, like negative is happening to you if your body's being cut into. So sometimes you have to just accept that the challenging or the negative transits do have to manifest in some way. And sometimes I do think there may be some ancient wisdom there where sometimes they would find a substitute in order to give some outlet to the negative Transit under the premise that it has to manifest in some way, so that you may. You might as well choose the manifestation of the negative Transit rather than just having it happen to you through some external circumstance that is not of your

choosing. So that's a whole sort of maybe separate topic that we could talk about in a future video, perhaps. But for the purpose of this, I just want to raise that topic for people to start thinking about and reflecting on. That astrology sometimes is about learning when to say no and learning when not to act and figuring out what are the transits that you have sometimes that are always really problematic transits for you in terms of your history. Like what are the ones that historically have just been ones that have been really unfortunate or in which you haven't encountered success in the past. Sometimes once you've identified your most difficult transits, knowing when those are coming up again in the future can be really helpful because maybe you don't want to schedule something really positive on those same dates if you're likely to experience a similar outcome as the past. So in that instance, you might just schedule it a week after or a week before that transit and avoid having some major event coincide with it again in the future. But even just

doing that in itself sometimes requires a certain amount of discipline, a certain amount of forethought, and a certain amount of restraint to say, I'm not going to do this thing that I otherwise was going to do during this date, and instead I'm going to wait. I'm going to postpone things until the following week. Um, and that may not come naturally at first, but I think with enough practice, eventually you get the hang of it, and it becomes like a muscle that you exercise over time as an astrologer of knowing when not to act. So, um, everybody should think about that, contemplate that, let me know what you think in the comments, um, if you've had experiences like that of events where you had an option to do something on a certain date or do it on another date, but you decided to go with the earlier date out of impulse, but then later ended up regretting it, um, or something like that. So, let me know what you think of this in the comments, and, um, yeah, we'll continue the discussion there.

All right, thanks for watching. [Music] [Music]

Astrology and the Art of Not Acting

Astrology and the Art of Not Acting