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...
Jul 01, 2025•19 min•Ep. 93
Want to have Steven Forrest in your pocket? That’s how many early adopters have described LILA (say: LEE-la), our astrological mobile app for iPhones and Androids. To spread the word about it, we’re giving away a free four-month subscription to anyone who wants one, no strings attached. Just hit this link and it’s all yours. https://link.lilaverse.app/Steven120 Please give it a try. There are some more step-by-step details below, but the offer is simple and straightforward. If you like it, feel ...
Jun 01, 2025•15 min•Ep. 92
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 d...
May 02, 2025•17 min•Ep. 91
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 fe...
Apr 01, 2025•14 min•Ep. 90
The lunar nodes shifting into a new pair of signs is always a big deal. It happens every year and a half or so, and it impacts everybody, both personally and in the world’s headlines. A few weeks back, on January 28, the Moon’s (Mean) north node crossed the line and entered Pisces, where it will remain until it transitions into Aquarius on August 18, 2026. (The south node entered the opposite sign, Virgo, at the same time.) In this short essay, my intention is to put the personal meaning of the ...
Mar 01, 2025•26 min•Ep. 89
Pluto, the “Lord of the Underworld,” was discovered on February 18, 1930 and announced publicly on March 13 of that year. While the exact dates are of limited importance in our work, Pluto’s discovery itself was momentous. From the astrological perspective, it marks nothing less than the collective human discovery of the unconscious mind. In essence, with the discovery of Pluto, we are talking about the birth of psychology as part of the human conversation. As ever, with massive astrological cha...
Feb 01, 2025•21 min•Ep. 88
I cringe whenever I hear an astrologer call Mars a “malefic” planet. Mars can bring us so many gifts, starting with the courage to stand up for ourselves. It's got a dark side though – so do all the planets. Where Mars lies in your chart, you’ll definitely need some of that courage. That’s because Mars usually marks a place in your life where you’ll face some serious stress. Nobody enjoys that, even though we might learn some useful lessons in facing it down. I suppose that astrologers who miss ...
Jan 01, 2025•24 min•Ep. 87
How many books on your astrology shelf contain a phrase like this one: If your Mercury is in Gemini or the 3rd House . . .? With two cents’ worth of logic, the conclusion is inescapable: the author is telling you that the two configurations mean the same thing. If A equals both B and C, then B equals C and there’s not a single scrap of wiggle room about that anywhere. The trouble is that in this case, B does not equal C. Houses and signs are not the same. They do overlap in meaning, as we will s...
Dec 01, 2024•16 min•Ep. 86
The 2:14 PM time of birth I use here for mystery writer Agatha Christie is new information. When I wrote about her in Yesterday’s Sky in early 2008, I used her then-current birth time of 4:00 AM, which I found on seemingly good authority. Later, it emerged that "a midwife named Mrs. Shelton-Price who, according to her bill, had charged one crown and two shillings to deliver Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller at 2:14 pm on Monday afternoon, September 15." This new time of birth now gives Agatha Christie...
Nov 01, 2024•39 min•Ep. 85
On October 11, Pluto makes a station, turns around, and heads for the Aquarian frontier for the last time. As you probably know, it’s been toggling between retrograde and direct motion while straddling the Aquarian cusp for quite a while. It was in Aquarius for ten weeks back in the middle of 2023 and returned to Aquarius a second time between January and September 1st of this year. That’s the day it re-entered Capricorn for a final time. After making its station this month, Pluto turns direct a...
Sep 17, 2024•19 min•Ep. 84
In all my years of practicing our mysterious craft, I have never once met anyone who possessed these two qualities at the same time – they didn’t believe in astrology and they knew a damned thing about it. Seeing this pair of conditions operating in the same person would be like finding a blind Uber driver or an astronaut with a big fear of heights. They’re unicorns. They don’t exist. Once we give astrology a chance to prove itself, its efficacy simply can’t be denied. Just this week I did a rea...
Aug 25, 2024•15 min•Ep. 83
I never had kids. Other than my cats, the nearest thing to children in my life has been my books – and at last count, I’m the proud papa of sixteen of them. In one way, my books are even more like my kids than my cats are. That’s because they last a lot longer. You expect to outlive your cat, but you can at least hope for the opposite with your books (and of course, your children.) My firstborn book – my first published book to be precise – was The Inner Sky, which came out in August 1984. That’...
Jul 18, 2024•15 min•Ep. 82
Among conventional astrologers, trines are lucky aspects, period. The more of them you have, the luckier you’ll be. But to win the Gold Medal, what you really want is a Grand Trine – that’s three planets (or you can include the Angles) arranged in an equilateral triangle. You’re allowed a little slush – the triangle doesn’t have to be perfect, but it had better be close. What orbs to allow? There’s a lot of argument there – say, a few degrees, no more than seven or eight. As usual, if the Sun, M...
Jun 26, 2024•22 min•Ep. 81
When I was sixty-one years old, I met one of the two or three wisest human beings I have ever encountered. His name was Robert A. Johnson. Our relationship had an enormous impact on me, one whose effects and treasures I am still sorting out fourteen years down the road. Astrology helps! At age eleven, Robert lost a leg when he was hit by a car. He told me that his childhood ended that day. The year I was born – 1949 – he was in Zurich, Switzerland, studying psychology with Carl Jung and in analy...
May 28, 2024•19 min•Ep. 80
None of what follows is medical advice. In fact, I believe that as medical advice it is mostly incorrect or, at best, misleading. But it’s still a true story . . . When I was born, the doctor told my mother that she had a B-vitamin deficiency and that it was probably exacerbated by the fact that she was breastfeeding me. To correct the problem, he recommended that she drink a pint of Guinness Stout every day. It’s true that Guinness Stout contains Folate, which is a B vitamin necessary for the p...
Apr 22, 2024•16 min•Ep. 79
I doubt there’s an astrology fan anywhere in the world who doesn’t realize that Jupiter and Uranus will form a conjunction on April 20. The Internet is abuzz with it and well it should be – this event is a big deal, even though it’s not a terribly rare one. With Jupiter’s quick 12 year orbit and Uranus’s slow-boat 84 year orbit, Jupiter catches up about every 14 years. Still, this conjunction is a powerful force, always guaranteed to leave its mark on the world. It’ll leave its mark on your life...
Mar 27, 2024•12 min•Ep. 78
Getting older is a weird business. I’m quite aware that some of you readers and listeners might have no idea who Monty Python was and in fact some of you may even think he was one person. They were actually six Englishmen who formed a hugely successful comedy troupe back in 1969. It’s been said that they did for comedy what the Beatles did for music – and, give an old guy a break, you’ve all heard of the Beatles, right? In any case, before I go any further, let me reassure you that this newslett...
Feb 20, 2024•16 min•Ep. 77
What if, right before our eyes, something far beyond human intelligence and even human intention is working to forge a survival strategy for the planet? I’d be the first to admit those words sound like wishful thinking. Watch me prove them to you. As we contemplate Pluto’s in-and-out entry into Aquarius this year, the Internet is dishing up a smorgasbord of predictions ranging from a progressive optimist’s wet dream down to a post-Apocalyptic landscape of extinction nightmares. I believe that ei...
Jan 25, 2024•32 min•Ep. 76
There’s a fellow named Luis Gonzales Serra in Spain who has translated many of my books into Spanish. They’ve never been published – Luis does the translations simply as a way of studying them carefully. That’s dedication! (By the way, if anyone out there has connections with Spanish language publishing, I could happily put you in touch with Luis. It’s one of the mysteries of my life that while my work is available in at least a dozen languages, it’s never appeared, at least legally, in Spanish,...
Dec 19, 2023•19 min•Ep. 75
The bloody horror of the Hamas attack on an Israeli music festival and the ongoing bloodbath that followed it in Gaza – everyone with a heart or a soul is watching this nightmare unfold with disbelief. And of course there’s Ukraine and the seemingly endless, mindless brutality happening there. Then there’s the July 23rd headline from US News, “Six Months. 28 Mass Killings in the U.S.” Every idiot who wants one seems to have an AR-15, and nobody is safe to go bowling anymore and the kids are afra...
Nov 27, 2023•23 min•Ep. 74
On November 7 at 9:36 AM-PDT, the Sun hits exactly 15 degrees of Scorpio. That might not sound exactly earth-shaking, but if you were a Druid, it would be a really big deal. Actually, you might still be in bed recovering from the previous evening’s festivities – more about that point in a little while. Most traditional cultures were very aware of the Summer and Winter Solstices. The noon-day Sun would have reached its highest or lowest point in the sky. The days would start getting longer or sho...
Oct 25, 2023•14 min•Ep. 73
We’re in the midst of the epochal, but painfully languorous, entrance of Pluto into Aquarius. We know it will change the world – Pluto’s sign changes always do – but please don’t hold your breath. The process won’t be complete until Pluto finally kisses Capricorn goodbye on November 19, 2024, a little over one year from now. And that will only be the beginning – Pluto won’t be done with Aquarius until January 2044. Those of you who have been following Pluto’s patchwork transition know that it ha...
Sep 28, 2023•13 min•Ep. 72
On Friday evening, May 26, in Seattle, I presented a keynote talk at the sold-out NORWAC astrology conference. The title of my talk was one of my favorite subjects – “Reconciling Astrology and Spirituality.” We’ve put the talk up on Youtube. If you want, you can watch and listen to it for free by following this link: https://youtu.be/tbyFL8-RhGU Thinking back, maybe I should have titled that keynote address “Reconciling Astrology and Spirituality (or trying to.) It’s not always easy! In my twent...
Aug 24, 2023•12 min•Ep. 71
As August opens, the Sun is in mid-Leo faithfully advancing about one degree per day. Meanwhile, Venus is retrograde, having made a station near the end of Leo back on July 22nd. That means that the Sun is going forward and Venus is going backwards and that they’re locked on a collision course. The two finally come together in a conjunction on August 13th. That happens in 20 degrees 28 minutes of Leo. After that, Venus will continue to move backwards until September 3rd, forty-three days after t...
Jul 26, 2023•31 min•Ep. 70
On July 12, the Moon’s Mean north node, always retrograde, leaves Taurus and backs into Aries. That means that the south node will cross into Libra at the same time. They’ll occupy those two signs until January 28, 2025 when the nodal axis shifts into Pisces and Virgo. As ever, they’ll leave an indelible stamp on the headlines – and on your own life too. Here’s a quick review for anyone who’s not been studying evolutionary astrology for very long. The Moon’s nodes are really the heart of the sys...
Jul 05, 2023•14 min•Ep. 68
Rumors of a new world order emerging due to Pluto’s passage into Aquarius have been exaggerated – at least for now. For one thing, the Lord of the Underworld is now abandoning Aquarius (which it only entered on March 23) and returning to Capricorn, where it’s been stirring up chaos since 2008. That reentry happens this month, on June 10. Once back in Capricorn, Pluto will actually remain there for the rest of the year. We’re not out of the Capricorn woods yet, in other words. On October 10, afte...
Jun 01, 2023•12 min•Ep. 67
The Covid pandemic changed everyone and everything. Who can doubt the idea that as years go by, memory will turn the pandemic into one of those “January 1, 1 A.D.” kinds of dates – pivot-points in history, like the birth of social media or Beatlemania. I never caught Covid myself, but I’m no exception when it comes to my life being “pivoted” by it – for one thing, pre-Covid, I was on the road non-stop for forty years. It’s a crazy way to live. After Covid, my passport has cobwebs forming on it a...
May 01, 2023•10 min•Ep. 66
It was November 1966. I was sweet seventeen and lying in bed recovering from a tonsillectomy. Transiting Neptune was one degree from my Ascendant. One effect of that transit was that I’d just had my first and only experience of knock-out anesthesia. Another far more important one was that I was about to discover serious astrology. As I lay there in my bed nursing my sore throat, my Scorpio mom came in and asked me if she could get me a book to read. I asked her for an astrology book. I think she...
Apr 01, 2023•11 min•Ep. 65
Mark your calendars – on March 7, Saturn crosses the Pisces frontier. It will remain there until it enters Aries on May 24, 2025 – but then it will cross back into Pisces on September 1, 2025, not finally fully committing itself to Aries until February 13, 2026. That’s nearly three years in total, and Saturn’s passage will leave fingerprints on the headlines – and on your life too. What will it mean? That’s not really up to Saturn, it’s up to you. There are ways to be in harmony with this energy...
Mar 01, 2023•14 min•Ep. 64
Asteroids are fascinating, but in truth I don’t use them much in my own astrological practice. It’s not because I don’t “believe in them” or anything like that – their effects are quite demonstrably real. The reason is simply that the “big” planets keep me busy enough. In all professional astrological work, there is always a balance that needs to be struck between the number of points an astrologer will have time to discuss in a counseling session versus having mercy on the client’s attention sp...
Jan 01, 2023•14 min•Ep. 63
