This interview was conducted by Adam Sommer for his podcast April 29, 2020 – you can listen to the podcast here.
An Interview with Mark Jones “The Planetary Nodes, Pt. 2”
by Adam Sommer
Adam Sommer: It’s time to step out into cosmos, into mythos, into psyche. Welcome to another podcast. In this one, Mark Jones returns to talk about the planetary nodes once again. Hello, Mark.
Mark Jones: Hi Adam.
Adam: How is it over there in the UK? First question.
Mark: Surprisingly peaceful really. It had also been glorious weather until today. So I’m tanned for one of the rare times in my life. When I saw Tony Howard of Astrology University on the weekend, and he was like, there’s something different I said, yeah, this is what I’d looked like if I lived in California. It’s amazing what it does to the British psyche, if you have four weeks of sunshine and you’re working outside and it’s just really nice.
Adam: And I can fully understand because I experienced with you all what I think everyone is saying the worst winter ever.
Mark: It was certainly the wettest. Yeah, it’s mild and wet. But it was so wet. So consistently wet.
Adam: Well, there were a few storms that flooded things I don’t want to say that’s mild. I saw photos of you trying to dig a bit.
Mark: That was intense, wasn’t it? My daughter likes to watch that video. For those who haven’t seen it, I am in what is normally a very pleasant little stream that runs alongside and then through my land, my house, my garden, and it is suddenly 20 times bigger and I am live in it with a shovel trying to dig out a new trench, so it doesn’t flood my garden for about 45 minutes before the cold and everything caved me in, but luckily my father in law came around half an hour later. And I managed to get back out there and finish the job and save the day. But my goodness, I never thought I’d become this kind of personality. It’s like shockingly intellectual. It’s taking me out of the library, taking me out of the consulting room and just throwing me into earth and soil and water and manual labor. And with a purpose, not just working out at the gym watching your miles tick by. But for a reason, this thing about the land here, which coming to Wales, I’ve come back to literally where my forebears used to live. And when we had the house in principle but we didn’t yet own it, I discovered that the local artists of the area was a relative of mine, and I have his painting of the church at the top of the hill in my office and things like that. And then this land, I know you stayed here pal and the last time we spoke, it was in the pleasure of personal company, it seems like a different era right now that we were sat together closely in a room after having mooched around my local district together. It’s like a different world now isn’t it almost?
Adam: Feels that way.
Mark: And as you well know, there were serious floods here over the winter. And some people have gone into forced lockdown in homes that aren’t yet ready or recovered from the flood damage. So I likened it to a student of mine as like a game of musical chairs. That game you play when you’re a kid, you’re dancing around, and the music stops, and you got to find a chair, but a chair’s been removed. It’s like the music stopped, where were you when the music stopped? Maybe you were stranded in a different country. Or maybe you’re somewhere really cool. Or maybe you’re just staying at home. But that was the that was the lottery, wasn’t it? Some people were more okay than others when the music stopped.
Adam: I’ve been thinking about that a lot, Mark. It’s a good analogy for musical chairs. Because wherever we fell, that was our karma. And being where I’m at in Boulder, there’s so many things that I can be grateful for, even though it’s unfortunate that I’m not in the UK, and I’m not with my girlfriend. And there’s a lot of things I could complain about. But being here, and really knowing this land, if there’s any stretch of landscape that I know better on this planet, it’s here. And my favorite part of the Front Range is literally a block away from where I’m sitting. And so it’s really interesting that I get to walk that land every day. And not a lot of people are out. And if they are, when I’m walking down the street, they cross to the other side of the street. It’s a very interesting phenomena.
Mark: That’s quite weird, isn’t it, in itself? Just that that happens is so strange. In those moments, it’s a bit like one’s worst personal paranoia. It’s just manifest into reality. Oh, people are avoiding me. Oh, yeah, of course they are. Yeah, it’s not just personally. But isn’t it interesting that we both mentioned the land because I do wonder, there’s been a loss of traffic pollution here. The air quality has been fantastic. Yesterday evening, there were ducks in the garden, wild ducks. My daughter was squealing with delight and then chasing them up the hill. And then shocked when they flew off. And then she was trying to jump in a little cardigan with angel’s wings on the back of it. She was trying to jump and go fly higher, fly higher. So she could follow them, you know? And it’s like, the wildlife, this sense of the air quality, the sense of the land, breathing, the trees breathing, that the noise of civilization has just calmed down a substantial notch under all this lockdown.
Adam: It’s observable. Absolutely. And here, I’ve talked about it a few times, but the evidence, especially of the lions, like the mountain lions in the hills, like they’re coming down and checking everything, like what’s going on down there? And we’ve had a lot of snow over the last couple of weeks, and I’ve seen a lot of big cat prints on my walks.
Mark: That’s so cool.
Adam: I love it. I love it. That is so curious. Cats are so sensitive. And then like wait, what’s going on down there? Oh, everyone’s watching the Tiger King. We can just walk around. But yeah, sometimes I want to say this to you with your adorable little daughter chasing after ducks. That was my first word, Mark. It sounded like f*ck I guess. My mom told me. I’m like, f*ck. F*ck.
Mark: Yeah. She says quack quack for ducks. She goes quack quack. So she calls them. But her first word was yes. And it’s really fantastic. One day, my daughter just said yes to us. And then we realized we could ask her things and she could say yes, it was this pretty liberating word. My wife could argue that she also said mommy, but I’m pretty sure it was yes first. And it felt incredibly affirmative, to be honest. I almost posted on Facebook that day, my daughter said her first word, and the word was yes. Because it felt like a kind of benediction. And especially when you have very young children, it’s like trying to keep a baby otter alive or something, you know, you’re very giving, you’re concerned. They’re cute, they’re wonderful, but you don’t really know. You’re guessing, you’re intuiting, you’re in a kind of nonverbal rapport some of the time. And it is such a relief to your conscious mind when your child can start communicating and affirming things for you. It really does just change the relationship because there’s a lot that you’re winging in the early stages of being a parent. And, paradoxically, you’re winging it in a very high-pressure situation. You’re a parent for the first time, oh my god, and you’re exhausted relentlessly. Because the sleep cycles all over the place, etc. So it’s really incredible phase. But it’s such a relief when kids start saying words and you can really feel that they can agree to things, you know?
Adam: Yes, to take her word. That should be a thing. I think we should at least get at some point, a tattoo of our first word. I don’t know if I want to do that for mine. That is helpful.
Mark: Well, yeah. Be careful what it is. Duck you. But I think there is something lovely about that. And these early memories, I tell you, having a child is like a living embodiment of the natal chart, in its early vibrancy, without filter, without conditioning. I can tell that my daughter is a Taurus, and that she has the Moon and Venus in Cancer in the eighth, you know, I can just feel that. I can feel her Moon-Venus Cancer eighth, she can’t get close enough to us sometimes. It’s like she wants to be absorbed. My wife especially but both of us sometimes. It’s like she wants to merge into, to feel safe to feel right. And it’s been fascinating as an astrologer. There were these sort of intellectual propositions. I remember Samuel Reynolds at UAC saying to me, oh my god, you have this incredible opportunity. You can study secondary progressions or whatever, you can study the first X number of weeks of her life and contrast it with how her life would be lived. I mean, that assumes I’m going to live a hell of a lot longer than I probably will to really test that. But also it felt a touch intellectual, though I kind of noted it. I was asked to do so. I’d look at it like a scientific investigator, you know, can you see evidence of the way secondary progressions will play out in later years in the first few days or weeks of life? And I remain a bit of a question mark about that. But what I can say is, you can totally see and feel unfiltered natal placements. They just shine out, kids are so different, even before they’re speaking. Their vibe is different, how they feel when you hold them, their degree of solidity. You know, even when my daughter was only eight pounds, the first day she was born. She felt like a little asteroid of this super dense material on my shoulder, like Taurus, like a late Taurus. She felt solid, really like this little rock. And lots of kids just feel really light like flimsy, spindly, different, they’re airy, watery. She felt solid, and that quality remains in her. She’s not big, but she’s super strong. She’s super tall, slim muscley. But she feels solid when you pick her up, and it’s a quality you realize that the elemental qualities are real, and you experience them in this unfiltered way. Whereas I have always found that kind of astrology where people are like adding up the elements you’ve got in your chart as if you’re going to make some kind of soup out of yourself, you know? You’ve got this much in water, this much in earth. I’ve always found that a bit of a meandering game really, other than noting that maybe someone’s got no earth whatsoever. Because well, my wife has got no earth. And my daughter is like this little condensed. It’s so funny.
Adam: Straight from the Tauride meteor stream, that one.
Mark: Yes, yes. And the contrast between them. So I really have to say that being a parent has made me understand things about astrology and psychology in this firsthand way that I didn’t, that surprised me, actually genuinely surprised me.
Adam: And you kind of hinted at it with your wife, but for yourself too, the synastry I bet is incredibly educational seeing how she fits into your chart.
Mark: Exactly. And realizing what certain things mean. It’s like an astrologer and how important family dynamics would be. I remember Erin Sullivan did that work decades ago about family systems. I really think it’s an area of astrology you could expand on. My daughter’s Neptune is on her IC in Pisces 16, right on her IC. That is my wife’s Venus in Pisces. If you know that, then you know something extra about my daughter’s Neptune. You realize my daughter’s Neptune IC is also literally my wife’s Venus in the fourth house, part of a grand water trine. And you realize that there’s something about their love sometimes where it is my daughter’s happy place in the truest sense of the word. It’s her spiritual home, to be holding my wife in a certain type of Pisces energy field in their love empathy. It’s quite humbling to watch. Its profoundly beautiful. And then occasionally as the father you feel a little bit like the second-class citizen who’s asking permission to sit at the table and soak it up. But it is amazing.
Adam: What do you have at 16°, Mark?
Mark: Well, I don’t really know. It’s not my part. My relationship with my daughter is very different. Her Pluto is my Moon-Venus by a few degrees. It’s like something about my core energy is this very deep point of identification for her. But it’s very different. And even the composite charts. My wife’s a first house Pluto, with our daughter, and I’m a 12th house Pluto. Like, actually the core soulful dynamic of our relationship is completely different in both cases. And it’s very rich. As you know, you can really contemplate that on a subtle level. I don’t understand it, or I don’t claim to understand it all, because my daughter is too young. But I have very rich intuitions. Like I have been through something with my daughter of a particular 12th house way. It’s almost like I can feel sometimes how I walked out of a burning building holding her or I came through something.
Adam: A meteor impact.
Mark: Personal, a terrible personal cost. Yeah, to hold this little thing. And it is interesting. I caught her as she was born. I caught her. I didn’t have time to put one glove on it was all happening so quickly. There’s little things. She went onto my shoulder, my wife got up after 22 hours of labor, and promptly fainted. And there was this crash team because when you faint in that environment, there’s suddenly like 11 or 12 emergency medics in the room. So my daughter’s sleeping soundly on my shoulder, this little meteor condensed rock of energy, almost pressing my chest to the back of the chair, as if I’m being pushed to the ground by this huge weight of this tiny thing. And there’s this emergency medical team just going through the room this crazy stuff, like you’re in an episode of ER, and the whole time my daughter is just sleeping peacefully, just held there. And that intuitively, right now this is the first time I’ve put these two things together feels like the intuition I have about our 12th house Pluto. That I’ve been in some situation and holding her through this thing unraveling around us to come to a certain place. Whereas my wife’s relationship with her is very active, very interactive, my wife leads her into the world. I have this sense of just the holding of this background. Presence of how she’s safe.
Adam: Mark, are you familiar with Grof’s perinatal matrices?
Mark: Yes.
Adam: When you told that story, that was the first image that came to mind like stage three and four. Pluto phase and you know, that’s the trauma of birth. And then Uranus the final liberation of it, but she has Uranus in Taurus, right?
Mark: Yes, she does. Zero degrees.
Adam: Zero degrees.
Mark: Right. She’s right at the beginning of zero degrees, like zero minutes or 10 minutes or something.
Adam: And the way you describe this dynamic with Pluto 12th house, I mean, you do have a business that’s called the Pluto School after all.
Mark: Well, and even what relationship my Moon-Venus, her Pluto, what might work in the world? What will that mean to her growing up? These are unknowns, aren’t they? And me being so much older, when she’s later in life. And I’m not even around or I’m an old infirm man of some kind, reading books in his study. She will be able to watch videos of me teaching and do doing various things slightly more in my prime, as it were. You know, just who knows what these resonances are through time. What I will say is this, when you connected soulfully to a young being like that, and you’re an older person and older father, you reflect on these things. Time resonates through different dimensions. I already plan to some extent how there’ll be good things for her even after I’m gone. You know, you go into this love responsibility dynamic, where you’re just thinking in this whole other way about how you take care of things. It’s quite incredible. But yeah, I think Grof’s work is really incredibly interesting, and I don’t think enough has been made of it. Both in transpersonal psychology, I think the unfortunate thing of the psychedelic aspect, and then the Holotropic, breathwork, to replace it when psychedelics are essentially made it so illegal, that you can’t use them, has pushed it to a sideline that it doesn’t deserve. It’s so ultra profound, and it has huge implications astrologically too. It hasn’t been integrated, frankly, in our astrological understanding. And I do know, as Stan’s later in life now that there is some attempt to create a legacy right now, like a Grof Foundation, and there’s going to be some literature or some courses, because I think that work is massively deserving of that understanding is so appropriate you bring it up. I think it could revolutionize our understanding of the outer planets. And by the way, if this situation teaches us anything, it’s that the outer planets have an impact on the actual world, the day-to-day world. You know, it’s caused me a slightly painful humor to see certain traditional astrologers analyze this whole situation with Mars-Saturn, Mars-Jupiter-Saturn. But Pluto came together with Saturn and the world stopped. And there’s still a bunch of astrologers ignoring Pluto, Uranus and Neptune.
Adam: I do scratch my head at that.
Mark: It’s kind of mind blowing. It’s mind blowing.
Adam: It is mind blowing from really all three perspectives. And you could even throw Chiron in there too, but we’ll leave him out for now. Sorry, guy. And we can speak to this because you and I have both been talking about it from our own angles, you with this emphasis on the planetary nodes as well. I don’t really teach about that. But I’m very familiar with it. And starting with all the planets in Capricorn that had been calling the boneyard for the past year and a half. It was hard to know what exactly what happened and I’ve even done a whole podcast called The Black Swan. Like in speaking that, that’s how it’s going to occur. It’s going to be like the UFOs footage being released today. What’s that about? But for the Uranus perspective, it’s ever so interesting that Uranus is in Taurus now we have these little meteor babies coming in to ground us, but also what comes next with Gemini. And that’s something I want to speak to because Uranus’ history in Gemini, which is our future, especially the US is a little alarming. And then the Neptune in Pisces piece, which from my angle, like so much of this Mark really did begin on the collective level and that Mercury was retrograde in Pisces close to Neptune. And then the main quality that still remains, within all of this is this immense confusion around what the hell’s going on, like everyone’s on a different wavelength. I don’t know about you, but here in the US, all my friends, everyone I talked to is on a different frequency with what is going on.
Mark: Well, I think the US is the most polarized like that. It’s like this happened in China. And it’s the hidden advantage of a totalitarian state, if we can put it like that. And there aren’t many, so you should celebrate the few that there are. The hidden advantage of a totalitarian state is that when the shit hits the fan, you can lock down 400 million people in a day. But the US character just presupposes that would be a very challenging thing. ‘Hey man don’t impose on my freedom, my freedom of movement, my freedom to do as I please.’ And so the free state of America stands I think as kind of character contrast to the needs of the time. And then we have this very nuanced situation. I hold the middle ground, it’s clearly not a hoax. There is this virus, it does in a certain percentage of people produce COVID-19, that is deeply problematic for X percentage of those people. It’s not just the elderly and those with underlying health problems, but it is primarily. But it hits enough of them to be really serious, but it doesn’t hit enough of them to be like the bubonic plague or something like some people are projecting, like the worst thing that ever ripped through humanity. Clearly, the numbers show it’s not as bad as a lot of people thought it would be. Having said that, so you know it’s real but it’s not as bad as it could be. So then, you could ask, why is the whole world shut down for this thing that’s real, but not as bad as it should be, or could be? And then we’ve got to ask in the long run, all the people who become bankrupt, who can’t afford the health insurance, the stress factors, the mental health, the lack of other treatments like valuable cancer treatments they can’t get because hospitals are cordoned off because of COVID. You know, what are the hidden costs of lock down? For people in the long run, it’s very tricky. It’s a very nuanced situation.
Adam: And to you, because I know it’s not one thing probably in your mind, but to you, what is the main dynamic that is creating this chapter in human history? Is it something to do with the planetary nodes? Is it the Pluto Saturn cycle? What do you think?
Mark: Well let’s look at it astrologically. And see if it can point towards a greater human truth. That being the great challenge of astrology that, frankly, maybe not enough astrologers always pick up gifts. It’s one thing to read the Pluto Saturn cycle. Earlier today my researcher sent me an Excel spreadsheet with the entire Saturn-Pluto cycle for the last few 1000 years, with different kinds of formulations of it.
Adam: I want that.
Mark: Yeah, my researcher is very good. And I can send it you. He’s great. Patrick Graham, what a star. At the same time, analyzing that is one thing, having something real to say because of it is another thing. Not that Patrick doesn’t. And I’m not implying that. But it’s a challenge to translate these things. Clearly, the Pluto Saturn cycle is just the background of this. It’s like they came together, there was a slight pause, it seemed like nothing had happened. But actually, that’s because it had already happened in China. And there was a cover up going on. And I’m not going to indulge wild conspiracy theories. But it’s completely obvious to any discerning person that the Chinese lied about the situation to begin with, and the numbers of people involved. And that did not help the world did it really? Whatever face saving was going on there gave us a distorted sense of what was coming our way. And then so you have this invisible thing coming. So the Pluto Saturn conjunction, the Pluto Saturn relationship through history, it’s clearly involved. You can trace it at the beginning of the 1518’s, the Pluto Saturn conjunction to the origins of slavery, a writ from the Pope to the Portuguese, to allow human trafficking effectively, in Africa. You can trace these kinds of phenomena, various plagues and flu epidemics that people have traced to Saturn Pluto.
Adam: You have a conquest in the Americas around that point.
Mark: Yes, yes. So that in and of itself, you could argue, but the super interesting thing is that Pluto and Saturn were coming together on their own planetary nodes. I mean, I had identified this 8-10 years ago that this was going to happen, and I’ve been giving talks on it since 2017. And at my UAC talk on the planetary nodes in Chicago in 2018, I presented a slide on the American War of Independence, the Taiping revolution, the US Civil War, the First World War and the Second World War. And we looked at my researcher and I so this is from 1775 to the current, well until the end of the Second World War. The war starting with a Pluto transit to the south node of Saturn, or the North Node of Saturn. American War of Independence, it was the south node of Saturn. So this is approximately 21-22° Capricorn, Taiping revolution it was Pluto square the nodes of Saturn. In the US Civil War it was Pluto, square the nodes of Neptune actually in that war, but that the role of planetary nodes in war, an outer planet conjuncting the node of Saturn usually. In the case of the First World War, it’s Saturn. In the case of the Second World War, it’s Saturn. Second World War, it’s Pluto to the node of Saturn. First World War, it’s Neptune to the node of Saturn. And then the ending, when something goes on, to the north node of Neptune, something goes on to the nodes of Neptune that follow the nodes of Saturn. So the nodes are about 22° Capricorn-Cancer roughly, and say the nodes of Neptune are roughly 8° Leo-Aquarius. And in that longest cycle, these longer wars had a hit in the early 20s of Capricorn. And then you get the Japanese surrender, when Pluto gets to the north node of Neptune, where you get the Treaty of Versailles when Neptune gets to the north node of Neptune. So you have this simple pattern, basically, where outer planet transits to the node of Saturn, in particular, south node of Saturn roughly 21-22° Capricorn. And then you get the end of these larger complex coming, when something sometimes that same planet goes on to the nodes of Neptune, roughly 8° Aquarius, or 8° Leo.
Adam: That is so interesting.
Mark: So you had this link up to massive world conflicts, things that displaced millions of people, or had high casualty rates. And then there was this kind of gasp in the room at that point. Were you at UAC, Adam? It was just bizarre, because it’s in this crazy what it was Hilton in the Miracle Mile of Chicago, which I’d never been to before. So it’s incredibly tall hotel, by British Standards, total skyscraper hotel, like I used to get funny feelings in my legs when I looked out of my window. And they make this mistake about the way they arrange the rooms. So you have people getting very freaked out, people are camping out. I’m wondering why I’ve gone to my room early to set up and I think someone else is still in there speaking. And I discovered no, it’s people waiting for me half an hour before the talk starts. Because people have begun to catch on that the rooms aren’t big enough. And even though they’ve opened up a double room, I give this talk, there’s 25 people sat cross legged. There’s some people that can’t see the PowerPoint, they have to just turn around and look at my individual laptop because they’re so close to my legs. So my usual thing of pacing around on the stage can’t happen at all. I’m there in this, real tense, like bear pit. And everyone gasps that this like, oh my god Mark, are we heading for a war in early 2020? And I’m like, hey, I don’t want to say that. I’m this guy that spends most of his time trying to cut through the superstition of astrology and say, let’s not freak out about the future. Let’s not use astrology to indulge our cosmic paranoia. At the same time, the evidence is pretty compelling. And then everything goes quiet. Apparently, nothing happens. Saturn-Pluto come together on the nodes of Saturn, and pretty darn close to the nodes of Pluto. And yet, so you ask, in a way, why is this happening? Why has a disease that’s serious but not as serious as many things that have, there’s going to be nowhere near thank god like the Spanish flu that followed the first world war that killed 50 million people. I mean, why has it stopped the whole world in this way? And then we come to what I’ve argued for a long time about the symbolism of Pluto in particular, coming to its own south node, and then then coming together with Saturn to the south node of Saturn.
Pluto was discovered on its own north node. In the 1930s, when Clive Tombaugh discovered it, it’s on its own north node and it’s taken all this time to go back around to its own South Node. So Pluto’s discovered and you have national socialism, you have the Great Depression, you have the build up to the Second World War, the German empire trying to rebuild after what it conceives to be too restrictive a treaty in Versailles, etc, you have these intense rising of the forces of psychology of the deep, unconscious forces that led to the rise of the Nazis all coming up with Pluto power. And then Pluto goes all the way back round to its south node. At the same time that Saturn comes to its own South Node. It’s almost as if civilization is being asked to pause and take stock and say, you know, what are the costs of the civilization project? You know, what are we missing through our own adherence to our incredible and colossal infrastructure and hierarchies of meaning and power? Capricorn.
Adam: It’s well said, and I think there is something we all are being asked to do. It is like a contemplation around these nodes. And we can also say the nodes of the Moon, who have been on the same axis, right? Capricorn-Cancer.
Mark: Well, exactly. They were actually aligned with it. Part of the crucial builder point.
Adam: And one of the ways that I choose to talk about the nodes of the Moon is in the form of Rahu-Ketu as the dragon, right?
Mark: Yes, yeah.
Adam: And right when the phrase hit the headlines of shelter in place, or stay at home orders, it just like, flared up, this idea around Rahu, or the North Node in Cancer. And it’s like all dragons live at home right now. It’s like everything that we’ve left at home, in our own hearts, in our own universe that we haven’t really tended to, because our identities are so super fused with the world, in our jobs and our identity outside of the home, like we are all now forced to contemplate this. And I think it’s a really interesting experiment, whether it’s Mother Earth forcing us into it, some collaboration with the planets, whatever it is, it’s this cosmic joke. But we’re all meant to face a dragon that lives at home. And if we don’t know what it is, it’s probably eating us alive, making us go stir crazy. But if we do know what it is, this is an I don’t know if you’ve been experiencing this Mark, but I sure have. Most of my clients are in heaven right now. And I begrudgingly admit that I kind of am too, because it’s such an intense period. But like, I’m kind of liking it all in all, and I recognize my privilege. I recognize many things around it. That’s why I kind of keep it to myself most the time. But it’s kind of a little bit of a heaven. Because going deep and like doing all this wonderful Cancer work within is it’s hard to get there when the hustle is so fast, which is the way it was before this happened.
Mark: It’s such a well-made point. I do have a series of clients who are not just enjoying it in a couple of cases, it’s actually kind of resolved some real key tension in their life that now can’t go down and gives them this respite from it. I was mentioning my researcher before he loves it, you know, the quietness, the sense that just the noise of society and the town and the roads and the backdrop of society has just turned down. It suits introverts, doesn’t it? And it must be maddening for extroverts. And it must be maddening for those poor people. You know, big families in Italy that normally can go outside to a public space who’ve been locked down in a tiny apartment when the sun’s out with lots of children, they can’t even go outside. I mean, I feel for people, but I hear you. And I think your point about the nodes of the Moon and this homecoming is very nicely put. I mean, this is the chart right? This is 12th of January, in London, at 16:59. 12th of January 2020. This is the Pluto Saturn conjunction went exact for the first time at 22° Capricorn, the south node of Saturn by the way at this exact point, then 23° Capricorn within a degree of the exact conjunction but listen to the lineup. This is 12th January 2020 16:59. London. South Node 8° Capricorn. Jupiter 9° Capricorn. Sun 21° Capricorn. Saturn 22° Capricorn. Pluto 22° Capricorn. Mercury 23° Capricorn. All together and the Sun, Saturn, Pluto and Mercury all on the south node of Pluto and the south node of Saturn. 12th of January 2020. And it’s incredible. The nodes of the Moon were involved they were on the notice of Jupiter, Jupiter was on its own node. It’s it does seem that we’re not going to return to normal anytime soon, just because of the actual virus. But that may be the deeper question in there for those who are awake to it is, do we want to fully return to normal? Is there a way in which normal is redefined? The danger the key danger being here. And some of this would be optimistic. The fact that people want to get back out to the world and rebuild their lives is a wonderful thing. But the danger here is in two, three years’ time or whatever. You know, we forget this and everyone’s in a rush to get back to normal. But is the deeper question, what’s normal to get back to?
Adam: Do you have any insight or visions of what a world that isn’t the same would actually look like?
Mark: Well there’s a few simple practical levels and some of them are just basically like memes on Facebook and stuff, aren’t they? I saw one that was clearly accurate that I felt for a long time, which is clearly that job you were told you couldn’t do from home, we couldn’t work remotely about, you can a lot of the time. When the shit hits the fan, you really can. And I think there’s this outmoded supervisor mentality in the world. It was exemplified when at my house in Bristol, had this really good plasterer come and do a damp course on a room. Did this beautiful plastering job. It was supposed to be a two-day job, he finished by lunchtime on the second day, but I was super happy with it. And then I found it odd. I went up to him afterwards, he just sat in his van outside my house for three hours reading the newspaper. I came up to him, I said, hey, go home, chill out, enjoy yourself, it’s a sunny day. He said, no, I’ve got a GPS tag on the van. And my boss won’t let me go anywhere else. I have to go back to the yard at a certain set time. And it’s this mentality, isn’t it? It’s like a horrible school master mentality. Like, you must be seen to be doing your work, whether you are or not, you must stay in the place, whether you are or not, we can’t trust you to go home where you might watch that DVD boxset instead of getting on with your work. It’s this kind of thing, it would be great to see some of that dissolve.
But bigger picture, what happens to the aviation industry for the next few years? What happens to certain aspects of the travel industry because you’re going to have complications. If you know New Zealand has effectively got rid of Coronavirus but other countries haven’t, how does a country travel? That’s resolved it to one that hasn’t? What are the checks going to be in place in airports? What happens to certain industries as a result of this over the next few years? Does this come back next winter? Does it mutate? How long does the actual immediate crisis go on? Never mind contemplations or changing world and how long could industry survive? How long can certain restaurants or high-end hairdressers in the center of New York or Seattle survive? How long can the aviation industry survive, which operates on very low profit percentages? It makes a lot of money, but it has super high costs. Where does this stuff go? Is this going to change our international travel when the nodes shift from Cancer Capricorn to Gemini Sag? How much of a struggle is that going to be? And then when the nodes go into Gemini Sagittarius, and they spent a long time squaring Neptune, is that the part of us that wants to travel again fighting back or is that the sacrifice of that part?
Adam: All the questions.
Mark: Yeah, they’re big. They’re big. I don’t know the answers. But I await with interest. I don’t think the implications of this are going away anytime soon. And I guess that’s what the planetary nodes revealed. Because I think there may be people out there listening, some are clearly probably very into shelter in place. And you know, it’s foolish to risk people’s health. But there’s probably others listening, thinking this whole thing’s overreaction, etc.
Adam: Most of my friends.
Mark: Yeah, well, and I’ve started to reach the point where I think I’m in the middle ground. But I think if this goes on, as long as it appears to be, you should at least expand the list of essential businesses. It seems ridiculous to me that you can’t get a florist to deliver your flowers that’s working on their own and uses a delivery service that’s using this using safe methods. It’s like why bankrupt everyone? If this is gonna go on, and on and on, you’ll just you’ll just lose 30% of the businesses in the world. But those who worry, those who think this is all a hoax, or why is this being taken so seriously, you could look at these signatures and you could say this is the collective picture. This is partly why people feel in so intensely. And then to counteract those who think this is all an overreaction, just listen to the reports from certain areas of northern Italy. Listen to what’s happening in some parts of New York, and you’re just like, oh, wow, you know, that’s what happens when you let this thing go. And it just rips through your community. And then it’s a shitshow, isn’t it? It’s a real hardcore mess.
Adam: Yes. So let’s try to create a timeline and some optimism around it. Because, as two astrologers, I think we can do that safely and kind of speculate around it. And I think, when hearing you talk and the reason why, I mean, I always love talking to you Mark, but I wanted your perspective on this because I think I successfully have seen different things posted on every single planet and or asteroid. That is the cause of this. You know, if it’s not that obscure Black Moon Lillith that I don’t even use, it’s some asteroid I’ve never even heard of that’s all about this. And so, the planetary nodes are really interesting because they overlap with what my main mechanism of tracking the story which essentially, is everything happening in Capricorn.
Mark: I think that’s right. I think your boneyard analogy is beautiful. By the way, sometimes it feels like they’re trying to explain the volcanic eruption that sank a whole island or destroy the whole people by one little footprint on the island, they’re picking, like you say, one little minor thing. Even the analysis of the Mars, Jupiter, Saturn by the traditional astrologers in Capricorn is insufficient without the Pluto dimension.
Adam: I would agree.
Mark: So the Saturn cycle has really marked this as the huge stop the world kind of quality that it’s had.
Adam: I would agree and everyone has their voice, right? And it just depends on what voice you’re listening to. But I think it’s very easily tracked with your amazing research on the planetary nodes. But just a very simple study of ingresses, for example, like Pluto moving into Capricorn. What was the first thing that occurred, which was a global recession, because of corruption within the system. And Pluto, as you know, exposes toxicity and lies in what lives in the shadow. And so nothing was learned from that experience, business went on, the bailouts happened. And it continued until this moment, and that was the beginning of Pluto’s time in Capricorn. And now we’re headed towards the end of it. And not just the end of it. But of course, the support like you laid out Saturn, Jupiter, the nodes, the planetary nodes, all of this.
Mark: I mean, it was just a crazy lineup, wasn’t it?
Adam: It was unreal. And it needed a name. And that’s why I call it the Boneyard. And also on that January 12, day that you laid out, I was also in Heathrow, prepping to go to Peru to get to the bottom of it with 12 people. So I mean we did a whole retreat.
Mark: What a time. Yeah.
Adam: We got in and got out before the military lockdown happened. It was brilliant. But my point is, like what I really think is happening through the eyes of Pluto. And what definitely I was shown in Peru is this is it’s the great cleansing really of all of the toxicity and like the attempts to patch it up, like printing trillions of dollars, like quantitative easing, or however it worked last time is not going to work this time. I don’t think so. I think that there’s too much information out there and people are too aware of the corruption. I just don’t think it’s going to get pulled off and it’s just going to do something else. Well, and what is my final point it’s moving into Aquarius, right? And you were mentioning something that’s very interesting around these air signs is that like there’s some resolution around the nodes of Neptune, which relate to Aquarius Leo. Also, like a part of this timeline that I see is Pluto moving into Aquarius and finally leaving this space. That’s in 2024. And then right around that time, give it a year or two as Uranus moving into Gemini, which is incredibly significant for the US, because that’s when it became a country, that was the Civil War. That was World War II, and now it’s present. So there’s that perspective as well. And so in my mind, I see this process from now into the mid 20s where all of it is slowly getting exposed. Finally to where it’s not just fringe conspiracy theorists talking about all this stuff. The mainstream is going to start to see it. Like the UFO News Today. I don’t know if you’ve got that. But the Navy released this footage that’s been going around forever with people that are really into UFOs. And like why now? Like, why would they do that now it’s just a really interesting thing. And I think we’re gonna be able to see more and more elements of that like watching the Red King unravel and suggest injecting Lysol into your veins to cure the virus. Just weird exposure.
Mark: That was a new low, wasn’t it? Already in a period where his leadership had not exactly grown in stature in the face of this crisis. It did reach a new low at that point. I think your point about well, let’s back it up a little bit. I mean, you have tasted of the Peruvian love juice. And I’m sure some people will see through certain things and maybe some others won’t. But it is interesting. Your point about the Pluto ingress, let’s go there first. That was a brilliantly made point. And, you know, the events of 2008 and 2009 have long been analyzed. I mean, you mentioned Black Swans before. I mean, the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and the whole concept of antifragility black swans. I mean, his work seems incredibly prescient. He seems like a very clear thinker. And he is, frankly astonishingly dismissive of the quantitative easing, and the sort of fantasies of propping up corrupt institutions around the 2008-2009 crisis. And your point about the dragon and home, starting then, what unraveled, what made that crisis, the world recession, it was the concealing of these subprime mortgages by putting them together with all sorts of bonds and giving them a triple A rating and selling them out, even though some of them were terrible risks. There’s an inflated housing market effectively in the US that was sold up through banking practices, and bought into by loads of countries around the world. So this inflated sense of having a home or the dream or, or being on the map for yourself is, the sad thing about these institutional corruptions is they play on people’s greatest aspirations for themselves, to have somewhere nice to be to be with their family, to have something meaningful for themselves. And I find that terribly sad, because as an Englishman, with a castle, as it were, I appreciate people’s need to have something to call their own or to build on to work on and it’s a shame that these corruptions happen. Is this just the antidote, the scourge to those corruptions? I doubt it will be as simple as that. But clearly, this is the flowering of what early warning shots were shown in 2008 2009. And some people think that was calamitous enough. But I mean, this is this could go a series of ways. But this could be the 1930s again, on some level, this could be like a world depression for years in certain areas, or at least, not just a 2008 2009.
Adam: I don’t think this is a recession. I think this is the beginning of a depression, for sure.
Mark: I think it looks like that. And I think maybe it won’t be across all fields, but it’ll certainly be major and it will take years and years to recover.
Adam: So we haven’t gotten to the optimistic part. Apologies, my listeners, we will get there. I do think one way of understanding the succession of signs is what comes after Capricorn is Aquarius, and it is a way of innovating what comes before it’s why it relates to subculture and tech and all these wonderful things. And so my feeling is in kind of in the idea of black swans, but also where tech is already going, like in this lockdown, people are going more into the machine than ever before. So that’s going to be one way of understanding it and the optimistic angle you already took of realizing that you can work from home, that your job is fully functional. From your own office, there’s that and out of it sprouts, like really interesting digital communities, people realizing what’s most important, of course, that’s going to be food, water, and keeping it small, keeping it local, all these types of themes.
Mark: Well and elevating the status of delivery drivers, people who work in surplus supermarkets or supply chains. And of course health workers and giving these people their due, maybe increased respect, increased earnings.
Adam: There’s a lot of ways that this can become incredibly beneficial for a lot of us because the system that came before this that we’ve been in for so long, in a lot of ways is broken. And I know you’re in England, but growing up here, especially being a young person, I can’t even put into words the level of despair that I felt when I was in college, or when I was a young adult, because of how much emptiness I felt within the institution, first of all, but also knowing how much I was paying down the line for it. Like once I graduate from college and I’m $100,000 in debt, how the hell am I going to pay that? Because what I’m studying in college isn’t going to get me a job.
Mark: I do think that’s terribly cruel, and that America has taken college tuition fees and amplified them to this gargantuan, you’ve supersized it like America supersizes so many things. You supersized student debt, and that’s punitive. It’s intensely punitive.
Adam: It feels like a prison in a lot of different ways around say, getting good health care. Not a lot of people can afford that. And so there are all these essential human services that just aren’t available to the average person. And that kind of system is toxic, it’s broken. We know about the 1% also, because of 2008. That term came out of that time. And I don’t want to get on my soapbox around it, but one of the great gifts of 2008 is Bitcoin. And you mentioned Taleb, he’s very bullish on cryptocurrencies. He’s from Lebanon and Lebanon’s currency is pretty much valueless right now. And so there’s cases to the blockchain technology that also shows a road out of this in a lot of interesting ways, not just financial.
Mark: Well, and an interesting aside on a more local, sort of classically English or British kind of level, lots of villages and towns here. In my local village, there are some good-natured folks who’ve been doing runs taking food to the elderly. There’s been a pop-up fish and chip shop in a car park, and they’re delivering 120 meals each week free to the elderly who are trapped in their homes. It’s like one of those old English sitcoms or something, it’s like some sort of beautiful old village, England or Britain, or I’m in Wales. But that sense of Britain at a certain era and villages, towns coming together, making sure vulnerable people have supplies. There’s been an incredible sense of community here in a relatively embodied way. I mean, it’s championed on a little subgroup of Facebook, so s tech is used but it’s not like a tech community. It’s people popping around after their shift with some groceries for someone who’s self-isolating, or someone who’s elderly. So there is the humanity capable, the fact that there hasn’t been civil unrest yet, the fact that America, the most individualistic culture on the planet, loading up on guns throughout this whole time, guns seen as still essential items, loading up on guns, the fact that you’re not actually killing each other yet, is a testimony to the human spirit, and to community that under this degree of duress. And the possible bankruptcy of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people and businesses is a testament to the human spirit in that regard. And if this is the Great War of our time, if this is the second world war, unlike my granddad, vomiting out of seasickness, I’m sure on one of the days following D-Day and having to take a tank across Belgium. I mean, you and I talk to interesting people around the world and try and help them understand.
Adam: That’s exactly right.
Mark: From the comfort of our home.
Adam: That was a good meme that was going around. It’s like, yeah, thanks – stop complaining. Your grandfather was in World War II, you’re being asked to sit on a couch.
Mark: Exactly. Catch up on what Netflix is offering. You know, we’re amazingly privileged in that regard. And this virus hasn’t turned out to be as serious. And if these planetary nodes hold up when Jupiter goes to the node of Neptune in January, end of January next year, and when Saturn follows soon after, in the end of February next year, will there be a vaccine? Will there be some kind of way that it’s petered out? Will there be at least something that helps those people that need ventilators calm it down? I guess I’m a pragmatist. I don’t think this situation is as serious as lots of people think it is. I don’t think it will just change the world forever, in some complete way because that’s not how people work. Imagine friends or yourself at certain points in your life. One goes and has these amazing experiences, or I’ve known people go to workshops, or apparently have these experiences like I was having, and then they forget about them, or they are the one person has like almost a semi enlightenment experience, or takes psychedelics and 5-10 years later, they’re a junkie, or they just smoke copious amounts of weed all day, and they don’t do anything with their lives. And that other person that had that experience, turns it into something. You know, in my early 20s I had experiences like that and here I am, years later, 20 sessions a week, working with hundreds or thousands of people across the world, over many, many years. It’s people. People have to find their creative and spiritual will. And when you were talking about home and the return to home and even the boneyard, and you’re talking about the dragon of the nodes, it’s like really what it made me think of is like Kundalini or something. It’s in its repose at the seat of the spine. Most people can’t handle awakening. And if Kundalini even flicks its tail like a rattler, they get very, very anxious and they’re all over the shop.
Adam: I’ve never thought of Kundalini as a rattlesnake.
Mark: You know, it gets a little flicker. It’s like, they smoke some weed in their 20s or they have a moment when they’re in love or something incredible happens or a certain teacher speaks to them and there’s a little flicker and Kundalini rattles its tail, but then they shut it all down out of panic or those people that have panic attacks when their heart chakra is opening. Turn it into a panic attack because they don’t know how to allow the invisible heart, or the source of love from the soul to stream into them, they find it an alien quality. We’re so disinherited from our birthright in soul. We’re so unused to recognizing our inner royalty, the king or queen of our own soul or ensouled kingdom. We’re so unused to that, that it’s very hard to have the sheer largesse, the sheer gravitas of our full humanity, to face ourselves to face the future to face a world where soul is the primary value, because that’s the redemption really, when we recognize that being and the quality of being shining forth, the radiance of things is the most important thing, not how many mortgages you sold that day, or how many people you fooled into buying your product. That’s not actually that good. It’s like a change in values. But those changing values don’t happen quickly because they’re allied to a change in consciousness. They’re allied to the existential and moral freedom of individuals and sections of the collective awakening effectively to their true potential.
Adam: That is what we can be searching for. This is my language, a dragon at home and we try not to distract around it. Like maybe there is a little snake flittering its rattle. Like Kuni is trying to wake up. And so what a great time to do your practices, try to remember, wonderful point you made about like how quickly we forget about stasis, or peak moments in our life. Try to remember your victory tales. I often talk about this with the nodes. Just as an exercise, think of all those peak moments in your life. What have you learned? What trainings have you done? And put it to practice. What else are you going to do? You can’t go to work? Maybe you’re working from home, but still there’s more space right now for us to go deep. And it’s very poetic. And I think at the at the end of all of this when the Jupiter Saturn cycle begins anew within the air signs, I do find that really fascinating as well.
Mark: Oh, it is, 21st of December this year. Together at 0° Aquarius, Jupiter and Saturn. It is very telling. And I love what you’re saying. I think this is a retreat. And I maintain quite a full caseload, and the young family, but even I can feel behind the busyness, the extra quietness, the deepening, the deepening. I myself, I’m going into an extended phase of my own inner development, a quickening. And I think your point about celebrating victories is fantastic. And it’s more than that. This may be unconventional advice. There are spiritual teachers that put it very, very differently. But I have found in all my life, that there is at my level of development a contrast between my peak moments and my moment-by-moment state some of the rest of the time. I did not just have peak experiences and then just stay there. That is not my karma, I did not have the grace of Ramana Maharshi, who had this catastrophic awakening as in his teenage years, and then was forever in that place. That’s not my life. And I find self-remembering my truest moments, self-remembering my deepest moments, it’s like self-remembering moments in life when your chart revealed itself to you. You have to learn to remember them the next day, or the following week, when you feel more depressed or down or your head’s cloudy. You don’t have the same degree of insight. I train myself over time to self-remember the greatest truths that I’ve encountered inside myself. I train myself to self-remember the greatest breakthroughs I’ve had about my own chart. So I’m still living that insight, even when I’m not in the insight space. And I think that’s a phenomenally important way to grow. Because what are the anchors for people having a deepening right now, maybe they’re homeschooling their kids at home, or they’re really struggling with it. They’re wondering if they’re going to go bankrupt or whether the government will come out with that emergency relief money or whether they’ll be able to keep those other people working for them. And I think people aren’t used to the idea of the structure, that people are used to go into work and having a brief having a remit, things that they’re supposed to do. And we’re not used to the inner remit anymore. We’ve forgotten the sort of inner rules. The fact that you can have this structure to your inner life. You can commit to certain forms in your day-to-day life that will heighten your experience of your own awareness and therefore over time, with commitment, facilitate your own awakening.
And I think I put it to people Coronavirus, no Coronavirus, the world carrying on before the world in lockdown. The exigent, the existential fragility of the human condition, the burning spiritual question what to do with the suffering of life that the Buddha raised. That’s true always, it’s always true. If we were all off to Vegas this weekend, and everything was as normal and all the planes were flying, and all the groovy stuff was happening, or this lockdown, it’s still true human suffering. And what is your response? And the possible redemption of the inner light from within more the shining luminosity of your true nature. And that’s the challenge. And for some reason in our times, and in the kind of Kali Yuga of our era, or certainly at the very least the non-golden age of our time. It is not easy, is it? It’s not easy to stay with that inner light, you have to train yourself. It’s not easy to learn a language or learn how to play guitar. But those things exist in the world, there are training programs, and you can watch YouTube videos. It’s like, how can we take seriously the invitation of our inner life and recognize that something beautiful waits for us there? Not just this horrible challenge for no great reward. But there’s actually an immediate gift.
Adam: We need reminders, right? Like how do you stay in a space, of course, you’re not going to remain in the peak like Ramana Maharshi. I know what you’re talking about though, like his soul was already tuned up to that high frequency. And so we’ll just say that when the energy got there, it remained because of his karma. But for most of us, when we have peak experiences, we can just blow ourselves out. And maybe we never come back because it’s too much too soon. But we usually come back to a baseline. And it’s like looking at any graph is something that’s growing that you peak, and then you come down to a baseline and you hit resistance, and then you go back up again. And that’s why we need reminders, and so maybe like relistening to that, what Mark just said, more than once a week or do it in your house. I am really good at sabotaging my bad habits by putting things in places that I know I’m constantly going to be staring at or being around. So a quick example is cupboard space. I don’t use it often. Because if there’s like supplements, like super greens that I know I want to be taking every day, if they’re in the cabinet, I won’t. But if they’re right there in front of the cutting board, I will, or with whatever it is, like I’ll just stick it right in front of my face. And it always reminds me to basically do something good for myself. Quotes, images, teachers, whatever it is, your chart, right?
Mark: Yeah, exactly. And for those all the time we spend at work briefs and PowerPoints and Excels for things, you don’t care about that much. And then people don’t spend that much time about their personal relationships or their inner life, or people research a holiday they’re going to go on or what kind of bathroom tiles they’re going to have or whether to get an iPhone or Google Pixel or an Android. And yet they don’t think about people they’re dating or they don’t think about their inner life. And I think the point you made about resistance is so important to me. Of course, there’s resistance when you’re taking on something new and challenging. And in those great series of books, or books like The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, the historical novelist, he argues that when the thing is the most important to you, what is really more important than your secret life or your private life or your inner development, your inner secret world. When the thing is the most important to you, the resistance is the greatest. That’s when the deepest resistance comes up. And the resistance is just every part of you that doesn’t believe. It’s the hurt child in you that didn’t receive enough love or mirroring. It’s the person that was bullied or persecuted by teachers at school. It’s the person that didn’t feel clever enough, attractive enough, good enough for life.
And then it’s all the historical, biological roots of the human ego or evolution through animal life, the savannahs of the plains. We’re both a predator and a prey animal. We have all sorts of fears about what’s going to get us. We have all sorts of impulses to kill or mate with other things or these desires, powerful desires to learn to deal with. The human experience is extraordinarily complex on the one level, this passionate animal. On another level, there’s this angelic potential to really sacrifice ourselves for some higher good. It’s extraordinarily complex. It’s like let’s give ourselves some space to work with that complexity instead of letting it shut us down. I urge us to become scientists of our own life, experimental scientists, with the laboratory of your own consciousness. And it’s not just a metaphor for those going off to the weed store. It’s like inner experimentation with states. When do I feel most loving? Can I amplify that? Can I learn to remember this loving space when I feel non loving, when I feel fearful or shut down? That’s the trick to me. Can you utilize your creative and spiritual will to remind yourself of who you are, day by day, even if it’s just as simple as I woke up down with low energy, but I remember that there’s something noble about me, that there’s something true about being human. Just that, just that by the midafternoon will have lifted you to be standing up straight.
Adam: Something.
Mark: Yeah, exactly. Something to just stand up straight as a human on bad days, just to carry on breathing. Stand up straight and be human is an achievement.
Adam: We’re opening hopefully those optimistic corridors for folks. I really appreciate it.
Mark: Well, this thing will go on forever. But the irony is the existential crisis it brings up for those who are sensitive, the implications of some of this. We don’t want them to go away really. Imagine from one perspective, it’s like the whole world has gone on as well. Most of the world has gone on a sort of enforced spiritual retreat. Apart from the fact that many people are locked in, I guess, with their family and maybe difficult relationships. It’s the sad reality of domestic abuse calls skyrocketing and things like that. But I’ve often tried to imagine this- if the world were for one hour, like remembrance day or so, everyone just went quiet instead of for one minute, for all the fallen. Imagine if everyone just suddenly went on a weeklong, silent retreat, like they’d signed up for Vipassana or something. The world would be shocked if most people just ended up in silence, in some beautiful location on a meditation retreat. Loads of people would be freaking out, asking for the benzodiazepine, or a shot of whiskey. What is it about being human? We’re so afraid to sit in the dark with ourselves. In that it’s like a fallen state in a way, isn’t it? It’s like our true heritage, really, the few moments where I’ve touched the greatest truth in life. There’s this burning light shining through me and lit from within. And yet, it’s possible to feel so shaky and vulnerable and frightened, and alone in the dark as a human. And yet there’s this burning magnificent light. And that’s just like the world’s greatest paradox. And I wonder if it is avoidable? I’m not sure it is. Maybe that’s the necessary suffering. Maybe you have to go through the one to get to the other.
Adam: The great questions of Kali Yuga, Mark. Maybe we should do another one at some point talking about big cycles because I haven’t ever done a podcast on the Yuga cycles of the great year.
Mark: Yes.
Adam: And that too is bringing it to the planetary node levels, a big step out there looking at Pluto Neptune cycles, bigger step out that but really precessional. We are ascending out of the bottom, like the ultimate shit of the great cycle, which is Kali Yuga, to the Indians and the Pisces age, to our lingo, and that’s where the Aquarius age idea comes from. So I think it’s really important to keep that in mind too, is what you describe this blinding inner light. It’s a reality of being human is the consciousness, the great mystery. That’s there, and that light is absolutely present. When you shut your eyes and you go and explore it. It’s there. Imagine in 10,000 years when we’re at the peak of the great cycle, when we’re back in the golden age, Satya Yuga. That’s a given and it is like every maybe, it’s even every month, Mark where there’s a whole day that the whole planet just goes into silence. Can you imagine the vibe on those silent days?
Mark: I think it’s important to think like that and I think you’re hinting here the Pluto transition to Aquarius in the mid 2020s. When does the Age of Aquarius start? And I’m not saying that is the start of it. But the fact that Jupiter and Saturn go in there at the end of the year, the fact that Pluto is there for a very long time in the mid 2020s. It’s not irrelevant to it is it? I think there are other complicated factors and it would be interesting to look at the dates when Pluto is going to be on the nodes of Neptune there and some other cycles, but the fact that Pluto starts in the mid 2020s to go into Aquarius is surely relevant to this transitional phase. We are in some kind of transitional phase from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. And the optimism of the 60s under the Pluto-Uranus influence was kind of – the Age of Aquarius is now. Well, it’s much more complex than that. Maybe it’s a transition of a few hundred years. I don’t know how it works exactly. But it’s certainly interesting that big players are shifting into Aquarius in the next few years. And that the whole Capricornian edifice and structure of the world is on pause right now. that the world just paused itself to let a virus play out, that it even can just pause itself like that is interesting. As all these planetary energies shift towards Aquarius is super interesting. So I think prior to even that beautiful idea of the Golden Age in Hindu cycles, the Age of Aquarius is a real transition. The precession is heading towards that. It’s not making it up. It’s not excessive 60s optimism. Now, we don’t know there are a series of theories when it exactly happens. And I doubt it is just one single date. But it’s certainly a movement towards it isn’t it? Pluto entering the picture and staying there for years.
Adam: There’s a nonzero chance that it’s not correlated.
Mark: Exactly. Exactly.
Adam: And yeah, just the big transitions, and we can get on onto that subject and get lost, I’m sure. But I really liked where we took the conversation towards the end there, Mark. And I’m curious, maybe like a lot of folks are because, you know, this is the second podcast we’ve done on the planetary nodes. When is this book coming out that you’ve been working?
Mark: The essence of the material was written nearly two years ago, now. It’s on its third editor. It’s complex material. I’m sure this doesn’t mean it will avoid all its flaws as a book. But it does mean that it will be very clearly written, hopefully, so that the complexity shines through. It will be out this summer. It’s in final editing now. And when I conceived of it many years ago, Adam, I was thinking in terms of the cycles. And I was thinking of looking at precession and the different astrological ages, at least of the last maybe eight or 10,000 years since the kind of shift towards agriculture and the movement away from hunter gatherer societies. But it just got philosophically very complex. And it would have been a lot of like, from Mark’s intuition type writing, which I’m not saying is valueless. But I realized that the planetary nodes are these, to those who know, this incredibly rich source of intel. And yet, so few people are really paying them that much attention. There’s so little modern literature on it outside of the work of Dane Rudhyar you know, Zip Dobbins. The guy that wrote Heaven From Earth, and Grant, Lewi, you know, there’s a few that have considered it deeply. But I realized I had to address the community, I realized it had to be a sensible researched book so that other astrologers might take on board this rich material. So I went into a deep historical analysis of the last few thousand years and have shown many, many things using the planetary nodes. And that’s taken a lot of editing. So it’s as clear as possible. So it stands the test of time. In that pause, I missed the chance to bring it out and point to the 2020 conjunction before actually happened. But I’m glad that my editor and publisher and editor, myself, we’re looking at the legacy principle, and try and write these books. We’re looking at things that hopefully stand the test of time in so that over time, there’s a body of work that we create that’s meaningful. And so I’ve had to accept that pause to guarantee that standard. But yeah, certainly by August, September, it’ll be out. With the eclipses then. Fingers crossed.
Adam: And yeah, for everyone listening because we didn’t go into it in this conversation. But there is another show Mark and I did where you went much deeper into what they are. And I don’t want to rehash that in this one. So I’m glad we took the angle that we did. So in lock down are you doing anything unique with your, with your teaching or with the way that you’re navigating Pluto school?
Mark: Generally before lockdown this year, to be completely honest, I was taking my role as an astrologer and teacher of people more seriously, generating regular newsletters, generating more teaching material. And that was leading to these bigger workshops, and of course, lockdown as effectively put that on hold. And so I returned with gusto to client and student work. And it reminded me how powerful that is and what a joy it is to be with people in that process and how effective it is, and what a sense of kind of afterglow you get when you’re with people, and they make transformational steps in their life. So there’s been a kind of return to the core value of me not just as a teacher or writer, but I am a practitioner. This comes out of week-in week-out 20 sessions with people around the world, therapeutic mentoring in their lives. And just this personal sense that I might be accepting something of my spiritual heritage in a different way, something about the probably mystical Christian leaning in my soul that has in my life been a practicing Buddhist, or done various other practices that it’s hard to, out of respect for the lineage, really something like Vajrayana Buddhism, which I practiced in my 30s had this incredible lineage, the sense of it being preserved through the centuries. And this recent sense of returning to a practice, that isn’t just a formally laid out one necessarily, but that corresponds to my deepest soul imprint. And yet, taking that sense of greater commitment towards it.
That’s really the key on some level, that alongside being a parent, and trying to allow the love of being a parent to overcome the tiresome qualities of sitting through kids television, or, or the angst of being a parent, there’s a lot of angst in being a parent, you want so much, this little being, and they’re hurt, or they’re in a difficult mood. And you go through a lot to be present for them. And you recognize that really the closest teachers in your lives, your friends and your loved ones, aren’t they, being with you today. Just when you said that thing about the Pluto ingress, you just made something pop in my mind about the way certain things work about how they herald themselves in the original imprint. You know, that’s because that’s what astrology is in essence, isn’t it? Something about the moment you were born, heralds you. And it always reminds me how much I learned, what I actually think, when I talk to good people.
Adam: I love how that works. That’s why podcasting is so brilliant. To me, it’s something that I think I’ll always do, because it’s a reason to connect with folks that you really resonate with and love and enjoy talking to and then because we have to talk to make certain things real ideas need to come to life when we’re speaking. The bells go off, images appear. And we change each other. That’s kind of what occurs, it’s like an exchange. You know, instead of like real viruses, it’s like viral memes, or idea transmissions that get in there and some of them stick. Some of them don’t.
Mark: That’s such an important metaphor, isn’t it? Because the one sad thing about this, and I see it when we took our daughter in the car to try and get her to sleep and she was like, are we going to nanny and granddad’s? Are we going to Emma’s, my wife’s sister? We’re going to Auntie Fay’s? My wife other sister. No, no. But the look on her face. She can’t understand why she’s not seeing these people that she cares about. And in this social distancing, it’s the sad loss of human intimacy and community and yet the electric possibility of these conversations. I love what you say about podcasts. In some world, podcasts didn’t immediately make sense to me years ago when they first started. And now they totally do. It’s just like recording live fire, recording the crackle of ideas. There’s no prep for it really, apart from we just care about what we do. We’re interested in what we do. And I admire you for it, I think you keep yours very, very open minded. And there isn’t really an agenda around it. And I get that. And I guess that risks being loose sometimes, but it encourages the real, raw and honest thoughtfulness.
Adam: There’s two main ways of podcasting, in my opinion. I’m sure there’s a third or fourth, but the two main ways of doing it, which to me was always in the spirit in the beginning, I started this in 2009, the podcasts that I listened to up to that point weren’t this way. But to me, it just felt natural to record a conversation and make sure it wasn’t an interview. Sure, I’m asking questions. But it’s much more of a conversational format that you don’t really have to prep too much for. And that image of taking a snapshot of a fire, it’s exactly that. Two people come together. There’s either chemistry or there’s not. And the ideas that come out of it is what makes it interesting to listen to and just take, Rogan as the shining example of that. He does it for three hours, zero plan, and it’s the most popular podcast in the world. And then you have the other format, which is very much kind of like in the old world of interview. And like very curated type podcast presenting an idea. Like I suppose like Radio Lab would fall into that category. And they’re amazing podcasts. But it’s a whole different spirit, what you’re capturing. And so for me, I just think that organic way of two people coming together and seeing what you can capture in the spirit of conversation is what a podcast is. I love it.
Mark: I really enjoyed talking to you again Adam. It makes me very thoughtful about things. I think your point about Rogan’s well-made and someone shared recently in some social media about Joe Rogan and endorsing Sanders or something, something that he’d done. Oh, I know, it’s Joe Rogan, as if he’s a problem from the pure left or the pure PC kind of vantage point. But I mean, I’ve never understood that. I’m not into mixed martial arts or various things that Rogan’s into, but I even watched him talk to some guy about mixed martial arts, and I found it fascinating. The lineage of this particular tradition, the way certain teachers have taken it, the way some smaller Chinese master of something had won an Ultimate Fighting Championship using this particular technique at this genius level of mastery. I guess I respect anyone who tries to be a master of things or understand things or respect other people who’ve attempted to really engage in something. And I think that’s the openness around Rogan, isn’t it? And it’s kind of sad to me that political or social things or discourse things, or this puritanical drive we have in the unconscious of the collective right now, that we somehow find this pure figure who’s completely without mistakes or without sin. Or without a human side, you could say more absurdly, is just a shame really, that the richness is the curiosity and the difference. And I don’t expect my politicians to be shining saints, and I don’t expect actors or comics to have never said anything stupid or tweeted something silly when they were drunk. It’s like I don’t expect my astrologer to get everything right all the time. But I would like them to be a bit more humble when they get things wrong, you know. Isn’t there a just a greater realism somewhere that we could absorb people’s humanity more, that we don’t need for them to be perfect, that there’d be less newspapers selling when there’s a scandalous story? But we’d have a more realistic view of people.
Adam: In the Aquarian Age, Mark, it will come. You know, in bringing that up as one final thought because I’ve never I’ve mentioned Rogan before on the podcast and I watch him when he has interesting guests on in, for people that really don’t like him or anything, it’s really important to understand why he’s popular, and he’s popular and I think there’s three main qualities. One, he shocks the image of an alpha male, that because he’s an alpha male. But he’s also very sensitive. He cries a lot on the show. He’s very open minded. He’s very intuitive. He’s caring. It’s like huh, he’s a complex character. Number two, he’s master of many things. He’s a master comic master, MMA master hunter, you know, he’s a master of many things. And so that inspires people when they listen to it. He’s inspiring in that way. And the third thing going back to it is he is so left leaning, but also to the right. He’s nowhere. He’s nowhere. He’s just open minded, he really does embrace, I think, beginner’s mind in a lot of respects. And so those qualities, whether you love them or not, are really different qualities.
Mark: The intellectual curiosity. And the fact that the guy is not a genius, but he’s clever. He’s not a specialist, but he’s interesting. And therefore he stays on it. He’s going to get the real response from you. And he’s not interested in the sort of highfalutin story, but he’s not afraid of ideas either. And he’s so he’s going to ask real questions. And in the best scenarios, then you get great guests. I watched the hypnotist Darren brown on there recently. Fantastic about the different ins and outs of hypnotism. When it’s the right guest in that mix, you learn so much and it elevates intelligent conversation. Let’s not forget how radical is a three hour conversation in some LA basement, on relatively intellectual subjects, some of the time have millions of views or listens, millions.
Adam: More than most TV stations.
Mark: It’s mind boggling. The world seems to be turning around and saying intelligent conversation, culture, learning about someone of interest, learning about their focus, learning about what they’ve learned, is interesting to me more than the rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond, or whatever.
Adam: That’s right. That’s another optimistic channel. We didn’t accidentally fall into this, Mark. Podcasting does do that, conversation changes people. And that’s what’s so beautiful about podcasting. There’s thousands of people listening to this one right now as a little fly on the wall, but like there’s something that you said that maybe got into their mind and will be there for a very long time and it will change them.
Mark: That the seeds of Aquarius and Dane Rudhyar, the founder of modern spiritual astrology, the person that got into the planetary nodes. He argued that Western civilization was in an autumnal phase, that the leaves of its first outgrowth were falling to the ground. And the key was, are you going to identify where those fallen leaves or are you going to identify with the new seeds underneath them that come up in the next spring, the next era?
Adam: What a great image to end on. The Autumn leaves. He’s so poetic, Mr. Rudhyar.
Mark: Well, and he was he was really tapped in, you know. He was reading Jung as it emerged, he was hanging out with Roberto Assagioli in the 1930s before the war, just the real meeting point of astrology and psychology, he was right at the heart of it, and the Second World War, kind of pruned some of it back, but we can pick it up again. And maybe it is the seeds of that Aquarian impulse, and maybe even this podcast quality and sharing these sparkling crackling fiery conversations ais part of it. Anyway, I appreciate you, Adam. It’s been an absolute pleasure to hang out.
Adam: Likewise, and hopefully I’ll be able to get back this summer and we’ll be able to hang out. And that would be nice. We shall see. But always a pleasure to hello to the family. And it’s Plutoschool.com that people can find your work if they want to learn with you.
Mark: Yeah, absolutely.
Adam: Beautiful. All right, Mark, have a beautiful night. And we shall talk soon.
Mark: Take care Adam. Thank you.