The Missing Piece of Your Birth Chart | Midpoints Explained with Rick Levine
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What if one of the most powerful techniques in astrology has been hiding in plain sight all along?
In this fascinating conversation, Amanda is joined by world-renowned astrologer Rick Levine to demystify midpoints – the hidden connections in a birth chart that reveal deeper layers of meaning beyond traditional aspects and planetary placements. Through real chart examples, an exploration of July's extraordinary Full Moon, and a live interpretation of Amanda's natal chart, Rick shows how midpoints uncover the underlying architecture of astrology, transforming the way we understand transits, chart patterns, and the interconnected nature of every horoscope. Whether you're a seasoned astrologer or simply ready to deepen your practice, this episode offers a compelling glimpse into one of astrology's most illuminating techniques.
✨ Ready to explore midpoints with Rick? Astrology Foundations: Midpoints begins July 16th! Learn more and reserve your spot at https://astrologyhub.com/midpoints
🎬 IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR:
00:00 — What Are Midpoints? The Hidden Layer of Your Birth Chart
07:29 — Why Most Astrologers Never Learn Midpoints (And Why They Should)
14:06 — Are Midpoints Too Advanced? Rick's Advice for Every Astrology Student
27:06 — July 29 Full Moon: A Live Midpoint Case Study
40:05 — Amanda's Birth Chart: Midpoints Revealed in Real Time
52:21 — Why Midpoints Are the Future of Modern Astrology
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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
Learn more about Rick’s upcoming Foundations Midpoints Course: https://astrologyhub.com/midpoints
Study with Rick: https://portal.astrologyhub.com/produ…
Check out Rick’s July Forecast: • Rick Levine's July 2026 Forecast — WE ARE …
BOOK: The Combination of Stellar Influences by Reinhold Ebertin: https://amzn.to/4wlSSk3
BOOK: Midpoints – Unleashing the Power of Your Planets by Michael Munkasey: https://amzn.to/4p0KVhC
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Rick Levine is a brilliant speaker, lecturing and facilitating workshops all around the world. He’s the co-founder of StarIQ.com, a founding Trustee of The Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences, and co-author of Barnes and Noble’s annual “Your Astrology Guide.” Rick’s daily horoscope column was read by millions of readers for nearly 17 years through Tarot.com and Yahoo, AOL, Huffington Post, LA Times, Beliefnet, and more. Rick has taught an entire suite of astrology foundations with us here at Astrology Hub as well as several courses that are all available in our Academy.
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“Midpoints are real points whether we know it or not.” — Rick Levine
Transcript
Introduction: The Rising Interest in Midpoints
Amanda Walsh: Hello, my friends. Today, we have one of the guests on this show that you all love the most, that we love as well. Rick Levine is here to talk about midpoints. And this, it's so funny because I've been doing this for, like, over 10 years now, and—wow, yeah, I'm not sure if I wasn't ready to hear you talking about midpoints before, or if truly the midpoints have become a buzzword because of what's happening, I think, with the outer planets this year.
But I know that you have been practicing astrology with midpoints forever. For decades. Like, this is not new for you. Even if it's new—
Rick Levine: It's the first—the first article I ever wrote on astrology was in 1989 or '90 that was published, and the title of the article was Midpoints Are Real Points.
Amanda Walsh: Right. Okay. Well, well, it's taken the rest of us a while to catch up to you, Rick. Because now there's so much interest in midpoints, and Rick is really one of, if not the only… Are you the only one teaching midpoints or are there—
Rick Levine: No. No. No, there's other astrologers.
Amanda Walsh: Okay. So there's other ways to learn it. But we are working with Rick to make sure that you can learn it from him.
So before we dive into what they are, why they matter, and then we're gonna do some examples so you can see what would happen if you read a chart without the midpoints first, and then what additional layer and information you would get by including the midpoints. So we'll get to all of that.
But before we do, I just wanna make sure you know that our foundations class, Midpoints with Rick Levine, begins on July 16th. So right now you can get the best price that we'll offer on this class. It is a four-week class. It includes eight classes, so two a week, including four Q&As. And two of the Q&As are gonna be chart reading demonstrations. So as a student in the class, you have the potential or the possibility to have your chart selected for the chart reading demonstration.
And the first two classes are going to be released on July 16th. So if you're interested in checking this out, go to astrologyhub.com/midpoints, learn more about it, sign up. We'd love to have you in the class.
What Are Midpoints? The Two People in a Room Analogy
Amanda Walsh: All right, Rick. So what are midpoints?
Rick Levine: Well, what does the word “mid” mean?
Amanda Walsh: Middle.
Rick Levine: Exactly. Midpoints are just points in the middle. That's all they are.
I use an example: Imagine if you're standing in a room and there's two people in the room, and they're standing on not quite opposite points in the room, but just in different parts of the room. And you can see them both. And someone says, “Rick, go stand at a point kind of in the middle between the two of them.” You might not be in the exact spot, but you could look and you could kinda put yourself in a place that you'd be kinda halfway between them. And then you ask both of those people to kinda walk toward each other until they're right there with you at that middle point.
Well, in astrology, every planet in your chart is like one of the two or more people in that room, and every planet in the chart has a halfway point—a middle point, an in-between point, or a midpoint—that is the point at which they occupy the exact same consciousness, the same place, the same…
You know, if you think of any planets that are conjoined in astrology, any two planets. If someone said, “Describe to me what Saturn and Mars are like when they're conjoined,” well, you immediately go: Mars is, you know, hot and kind of directive and energetic and feisty. And Saturn is like, “No, let's do this right. Let's cool the energy. Let's make sure that we know that there's gonna be a way to get to…” And then you think, well, what happens when the two of these planets are coming from the same point? You might think, well, Saturn is going to temper Mars's energy and Mars is gonna fire up Saturn's energy. And it's kinda like if they're working actually as if they were one, they're probably gonna have a pretty good control over the gas and the brake.
Amanda Walsh: Hmm. So—
Shadow Planets, Nodes & Invisible Points
Rick Levine: Uh, go… I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Go ahead.
Amanda Walsh: Okay. Well, what I was gonna ask, because, like, the lunar nodes or any of the nodes are invisible points, right? But you always describe them as, like, energetic knots almost. And so they're—
Rick Levine: Well, the word “node” is Latin for knot, K-N-O-T.
Amanda Walsh: Okay. Cool.
Rick Levine: So they are. A node is a knot. And so in a way, midpoints are nodes. I mean, they're not nodes in the same way that we use them, but they're basically places where the energy is kinda tied up in a knot even though we don't see it.
And I love the fact that in Jyotish, in Vedic Hindu astrology, they refer to the nodal axis or the nodes of the moon—instead of as in the West where we call them mathematical points that you can't see—they call them shadow planets.
Amanda Walsh: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Rick Levine: Because there's something there. And look, we have graduated from what I love to call the incorrect belief in the medieval superstition of materialism. We know that we don't have to be able to perceive things with our five senses for them to be real.
Amanda Walsh: Hmm. So it's basically a point—if we had two planets and they were… This is how my mind is thinking of it. They're essentially, like, beaming energy, and they're beaming energy toward each other, and in the middle, those two energies come together—
Rick Levine: Mm-hmm.
Amanda Walsh: —and that creates its own type of energy.
Rick Levine: Yeah. In mathematics—I mean, there's a whole science of this that is physical mechanics—it has to do with having an object in the center. That would be you or me or whoever's chart it is. You have an object in the center, and then you have a force that's pulling this way, and you have a force that's pulling that way. Let's just say that they're pulling at right angles to each other, 90 degrees.
Mathematically, you can calculate, if you know how much force this planet is applying versus this planet, you can then calculate how far this center is gonna be pulled by those two forces pulling in different ways. And the mathematics of where that is going to go and how far it's gonna go, that's called the vector.
Amanda Walsh: Mm.
Rick Levine: So planets are like vectors, and then there's a combined vector which is the midpoint.
Amanda Walsh: Mm-hmm.
Rick Levine: And so it's how the two planets as one pull us in a certain direction, and we label that direction with zodiac longitude—14 degrees of Pisces and 17 minutes, or whatever it might be.
Why Don't Most Astrologers Use Midpoints?
Amanda Walsh: Yeah. Why do you think most astrologers do not consider midpoints in their interpretations?
Rick Levine: Well, first of all, we have to describe “most astrologers,” because I think most competent, well-trained, and technical astrologers do understand and use midpoints.
Secondly, there are schools of astrology—like cosmobiology, like Uranian astrology, like symmetrical astrology. Gary Christian from Astrolabe teaches symmetrical astrology. Symmetrical astrology is simply, simply the use of midpoints.
Amanda Walsh: Oh. That's what it is. Wow.
Rick Levine: Because if you think about it, if you have something pulling this way and something pulling that way, and you have a vector that's the halfway point, you've just described the symmetry of this to that. Midpoints are just big words but a simple concept. Midpoints just simply describe bilateral symmetry. You know, bilateral means that our right and left are reflections of one another. They're not exact, of course, but right hand, left hand, we have things… That's bilateral. And symmetry means that they're the same thing.
So midpoints are just a form of finding bilateral symmetry, and we use bilateral symmetry in many forms of astrology, even when we do inverse progressions, when we do contra-parallel. Oppositions are a form of a built-in halfway point because it's halfway around the cycle, and all midpoints are is halfway points.
And so, if you did a survey of practitioners of symmetrical astrology or practitioners of Uranian astrology, asking, “How many of you use midpoints?” 100% of them would use midpoints.
You Already Use Midpoints: T-Squares, Yods & Grand Trines
Rick Levine: Now, it's a bit of a trick question because I often ask in a room full of students who have not studied with me, “How many people here use harmonics?” And normally one or two, three hands go up. Then I go, “How many people use aspects?” And everyone's hand goes up. And I go, “Okay, you're languaging something differently, but if you're using aspects, you're using harmonics because aspects are just particular harmonics.”
Well, if you have a kite in your chart which has a grand trine, and you have a planet that is opposite one of the points in the grand trine making a kite—which is basically a grand trine with an opposition—the planet in opposition is at the midpoint of two trines. In fact, we astrologers have a configuration we call a minor grand trine or a sextile triangle, which consists of a planet that is sextile a planet on one side and sextile a planet on the other side, and that means those two planets are trine. What that means is that the planet that's sextiling those two planets is at their midpoint.
Amanda Walsh: Hmm.
Rick Levine: If you have a T-square, the planet that's the apex of the T-square is simply at the midpoint of the two planets that are in opposition. So everyone uses midpoints, and they're important. They just don't know it.
I'll tell you another midpoint that's important. If you have two planets that are trine—let's say your Sun and Moon are trine. Let's make it easy. Let's say that they're trine at 15 degrees of Aries Moon and 15 degrees of Leo Sun, okay? Their midpoint is gonna be halfway between that 15 Aries and 15 Leo, which would be 15 Gemini. Aries, Taurus, Gemini. Gemini, Cancer, Leo.
So 15 degrees of Gemini is gonna be sextile the 15 Aries from one side, and sextile the 15 Leo from the other side, right?
Amanda Walsh: Yes.
Rick Levine: The opposition to 15 degrees of Gemini is 15 degrees of Sagittarius. Now, like the North Node and South Node, every midpoint is really part of an axis, because you have a close midpoint and a far midpoint.
Amanda Walsh: Mm.
Rick Levine: So if you have two planets that are trine, the Sun and the Moon, at 15 Aries and 15 Leo, and now let's say you have Jupiter at 15 degrees of Sagittarius. That Jupiter is at the midpoint or on the midpoint axis of your Sun and your Moon. Are you with me so far?
Amanda Walsh: Yes. Yes. And it creates a grand trine.
Rick Levine: Yes! So a grand trine is simply three planets where each planet has the third planet at their opposite midpoint. Duh! So don't tell me you don't use midpoints. If you're using a grand trine, you're using a midpoint, you don't even know it, and it's so important.
If you're using a T-square, you're using a midpoint. Everyone who uses aspects knows that a planet that's at the apex or the square point of an opposition—the apex of a T-square—they know that's the action point.
In fact, we have a configuration we call a yod, which are two planets sextile with a third planet that's at their opposite midpoint, meaning that it quincunx both sides.
Amanda Walsh: Mm.
Rick Levine: And everyone knows that a yod is this crazy, magical configuration that people say, “I don't understand it,” or books have been written about it, and whatever. But everyone knows that the apex planet in a yod is the active point. It's just the opposite midpoint of the two planets that are sextile.
Now, even if there's not a planet there in your chart, that point is there. And whenever any planet is moving through the sky, or you meet someone with a planet at that point… So midpoints are real points whether we know it or not.
And who uses it? The question, “Why don't astrologers use midpoints?” They do! They just use the tip of the iceberg, and they don't call them midpoints, and they don't know they're using midpoints. That's how basic this is to astrology.
Is Midpoint Astrology Too Advanced? The Math Question
Amanda Walsh: Wow. Okay. When you first started talking about it, I was thinking, “This sounds really complicated.” Like, it's almost intimidating, some of the mathematical terms. However—
Rick Levine: Hey, look, learning 12 signs sounds complicated when you don't know any of them.
Amanda Walsh: That's true. That's true. But the more you started talking about it, I was like, “Oh, wait. Maybe it's not as complicated.” So for anybody out there who's going, “Is my astrology ready for this? Am I advanced enough for this?” What would you say to them?
Rick Levine: Well, I would say that astrology is really easy if you have 12 fingers… Oh, wait a minute. That's why astrology is complicated for people, 'cause you can't count. You need your big toes in order to get to 12. You do.
Look, I won't be evasive about this. There is some mathematics involved, and for those of you who are mathematically inclined and are considering taking the course, you'll love it. If you're not mathematically inclined, there may be parts of it where you go, “I don't get the math.” But you know what? It doesn't matter.
Remember, 50 years ago, if you couldn't do logarithms, interpolations, and solutions of spherical triangles with your own little pencil and paper, you couldn't even do astrology. Why? ‘Cause it was too complicated.
Amanda Walsh: Yeah.
Rick Levine: And so the magic is that we have tools online or software. And again, there are online tools for midpoints just like there are to calculate your chart. And so, being mathematically impaired—I think the technical word is innumerate—being innumerate or mathematically challenged… You know, there is a tribe in Africa called the Hottentots. Their numbering system goes: one, two, three, many.
And in fact, it was the subject of a wonderful book by a brilliant quantum physicist from back in the mid-20th century named George Gamow. George Gamow wrote a book—one of my favorite books as a very young teenager—about mathematics, which is one of the things that got me interested in all of this. And the book he wrote was titled One, Two, Three, Infinity. Because as far as the Hottentots were concerned, there was no classification beyond that; four was infinite.
So if you don't know numbers, there are gonna be pieces in this that are gonna be like… but if you can understand two people in a room and finding a halfway point, or if you can understand that in a T-square, the planet at the square point, at the apex, is important, or if you can understand a Yod… Or even a Kite, for example, coming back to that as an original example, we are using midpoints all the time, and we don't have to be lost in the mathematics.
I can use a computer program that does chart calculations, and it'll give me a list of every midpoint. But the real magic of midpoints is that they work whether you know it or not. Just like transiting Uranus conjoining your natal Moon as a transit is gonna work—you don't have to know it exists; it's gonna work whether you know it or not.
Amanda Walsh: Mm-hmm.
Rick Levine: And so we look at a chart and we see 8 or 10 or 12 or 15 points, depending upon whether we're using asteroids, Chiron, Eris, Gonggong, Makemake, or Black Moon Lilith. We look at the chart and we see these points. But what we miss is just like the person who doesn't know that Uranus is transiting their natal Moon, but there's an impact. If we're not using midpoints, we miss the hidden architecture of the symmetry of the chart that we're not looking at, where things are gonna happen whether we realize it or not.
And all of a sudden, if you're using 10 planets, there's 10 times 10, which means there's 100 midpoints. Now, you can't talk about, “Well, let me see, the midpoint of my Sun-Moon is here, the midpoint of my Moon-Mercury is here…” because there's just too many points. And so in order to work with midpoints, we need to come up with methods that isolate or highlight what the important axes of symmetry are and what the important midpoints are in a chart, because otherwise, I don't necessarily care where every single midpoint is.
Amanda Walsh: Right.
Midpoint Software & Free Tools
Amanda Walsh: So Rick, will you be helping us as the students understand how we can find these with the different software and with the different tools that we have available to us? And does the free software on sites like astro.com include it?
Rick Levine: Yeah. Astro.com, Astro-Seek… I mean, we'll go through them in class and we'll actually even do a couple of examples with software online in class. And of course, if you're running a program like any of the Kepler software, Solar Fire, or Astro Gold, they all do midpoint calculations.
But the fact of the matter is that it's very easy with pen and paper or pencil and paper. Pen and pencil don't work unless you have paper, and it's been so long since I've used any of those things! But with pen and paper, it's very easy to calculate a midpoint, and we don't necessarily always wanna calculate all 100 or 200 midpoints depending…
I mean, if you're using 15 points—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto (that's 10), Ascendant, Midheaven, Descendant, IC, North Node, South Node, maybe Chiron, Eris—we can end up with 200 or more midpoints. We don't need to calculate every single one of them.
Ebertin's Midpoint Cookbook
Rick Levine: And by the way, midpoints really came into widespread use in the early 20th century through work that was done in Germany—think again of mechanical precision—and the discovery of how important these halfway points are.
One of the books that we will talk about in class is this book, which has been in print a gazillion times since. Mine is not an original. This one was from 1940. But for years, for decades, this was the only printed book that I'm aware of, at least in English (written in German, of course), on midpoints.
Amanda Walsh: Rick, for the podcast listeners, can you say the name?
Rick Levine: Ah, yes. It's called The Combination of Stellar Influences by Reinhold Ebertin. And this book is like the ultimate cookbook guide to interpreting any pair of planets and their midpoint.
When you have a pair of planets… Let's go back to that Sun and Moon at 15 Aries and 15 Leo, and let's imagine now that Saturn was at 15 Gemini at their midpoint. So the midpoint is where the two energies come together. The Sun in Aries is expressive and active. The Moon in Leo may be more mentally oriented here but is still self-creative, and then you can combine those energies. And their midpoint at 15 Gemini, where they come together and function as one—if Saturn is there, that Saturn is going to give it synthesis. It's gonna give it structure. It's gonna hold that energy back in a way that crystallizes or stabilizes it.
And so whenever there is a planet that is sitting on the midpoint of two other planets, that then becomes the fuel that feeds this book, The Combination of Stellar Influences, because it's no longer just about the Sun and the Moon. It's now about the Sun, Moon, and Saturn.
And we could go to this book, for example, and look up Sun-Moon. This book is divided up into pairs, and then each of the pairs with a third planet. It says here:
“Principles of the Sun-Moon are spirit and soul, conscious and unconscious, vitality and feeling, husband and wife.”
So these are just keywords. And you gotta remember, Ebertin put this together at a very difficult time in Germany, so this book is known for being a bit of a downer.
Amanda Walsh: Yeah. He just… Well, you understand why. I mean—
Rick Levine: Yeah, yeah. And so although this book is a basic book—and there are many newer books on midpoints that we'll go into in the class—these books are in publication and available if you're looking for cookbooks. But The Combination of Stellar Influences, as the granddaddy of all midpoint books, doesn't always have the prettiest picture to paint.
In this little section on the Sun-Moon midpoint, there's this whole thing on psychological correspondences, biological correspondences, sociological correspondences, and possible manifestations. So the Sun-Moon midpoint can be a point of good relationships between parents and partners, or it can be joint success. But it can also be disharmony among partners or differences under tension when they're pushed together.
Then this book goes on and it says, “Okay, so what about the Sun and Moon with Saturn?” Because that's the combination. So here it says: inner inhibitions or repressions; the state of feeling depressed; increased loneliness. You see where it goes a little bit negative here?
Amanda Walsh: Yeah.
Rick Levine: Separation from the community; difficulties in a relationship with the other sex; joint or shared suffering; separation; divorce.
Now, again, we moderns know… For example, I could just quickly pull out a more modern book. Yeah, here's one. This is Michael Munkasey's book on midpoints, which is a much more modern book, and this book also has the same kind of things. The Sun-Moon with Saturn says:
“Increased personal discipline and work habits. Determination to motivate yourself to work consistently and steadily to achieve results. Helps you mold your life and your fate. Increases restrictions on your ability to progress.”
So do you see the difference in flavors here?
Amanda Walsh: Yeah.
Rick Levine: Everyone has a Sun-Moon midpoint, but someone might have Saturn at that midpoint. Someone else might have Jupiter at that midpoint, which indicates someone who may take too many directions at once, developing a philosophy, coping with life situations easily, and seeing opportunities which you use to take advantage of.
So do you see how this works? There's nothing mysterious here. It's just combining the energies.
The example we used had the Sun and Moon in a sextile aspect. But the fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter whether the Sun and Moon have any aspect to each other at all, and this is where the magic is. You could have your Sun at 15 Aries and your Moon at 21 degrees of Virgo, and there's no aspect at all. They still have a halfway point, and there still can be a planet at that halfway point, and that energy still comes together.
Amanda Walsh: Wow. Fascinating. Okay.
Rick Levine: Does that make sense? Did we do this okay?
Amanda Walsh: It does. It does. Yes, absolutely. Can you give us a few more examples? Because I think the examples really bring it to life. What I'd love to do is have you paint the picture of if you didn't use the midpoint—if you just ignored the midpoint in the chart—and then tell us what happens to that interpretation when you add the midpoint in.
The July 29, 2026 Full Moon: A Midpoint Case Study
Rick Levine: I have two examples to use. One is the upcoming Full Moon on July 29th. So this is a very real example by transit. In my July forecast on YouTube, I spend quite a bit of time on the upcoming Full Moon chart because July of 2026, as we all know, is just a crazy month. No astrologer alive has ever seen a powerhouse of transits like we're having this month.
Now, does that mean there'll be a powerhouse of events corresponding with it? Well, these are slow-moving planets, and sometimes events take a long time to manifest. So I don't know, we don't know.
But I do know this: there is a four-planet configuration that is being called Barbault's Basket, named after the French astrologer André Barbault, who focused on these large planetary aspects and the prediction of events decades prior. In fact, he died before the pandemic—the COVID scenario of 2020—but he predicted it based upon the Saturn-Pluto conjunction. He predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall within a couple of days of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction.
And he also said that Pluto being sextiled by Neptune, trined by Uranus, and opposed by Jupiter all in mid-July—roughly July 17th to the 21st—was the most important and most beneficial aspect of the 21st century. Now, we're there. It's on us right now, and of course, things don't look quite as good as he suggested they might be, which implies that we might be in for some surprising turns or shifts of consciousness. We'll have to see.
But what I do know is that this Uranus-Pluto trine, which happens about once every century roughly, doesn't usually happen with Neptune at the midpoint. Right now, we have Pluto at 4 degrees of Aquarius and Uranus at 4 degrees of Gemini here in mid-July of 2026. Their midpoint—halfway between air Aquarius and air Gemini—is gonna be fire, because that makes the sextiles. And we have Neptune at 4 degrees of Aries, exact, partile to the same degree at the midpoint of Uranus and Pluto.
Now, at the same time, we have Jupiter at 4 degrees of Leo trining Neptune at 4 degrees. Fire Leo, fire Aries, Neptune at 4 Aries. Their midpoint is at 4 degrees of Gemini. Which means that Uranus is at the Jupiter-Neptune midpoint, and Neptune is at the Uranus-Pluto midpoint.
We also have this Full Moon coming up, and it is an Aquarius Full Moon. The Full Moon happens on July 29th, and it happens at 6 degrees of Aquarius. So we have a Full Moon at 6 degrees of Aquarius that's conjunct Pluto at 4 and a quarter degrees of Aquarius. With the Full Moon conjunct Pluto, that means that the Full Moon is sextile Neptune within a two-degree orb (at 4 degrees of Aries). That Full Moon is trine Uranus at 4 degrees—almost 5 degrees by then—so it's only a one-and-a-bit degree orb that the Full Moon is trine Uranus.
But on the day of the Full Moon, we also have Jupiter conjuncting the Sun, or the Sun conjuncting Jupiter, within just a couple of minutes of arc. The actual Sun-conjunct-Jupiter happens, I think, within a half an hour or less of this Full Moon. So we have a Full Moon with the Moon conjunct Pluto and the Sun conjunct Jupiter while the actual Moon is full, meaning the Moon is opposite the Sun. Do you understand what I'm saying here?
Amanda Walsh: Yes.
Rick Levine: This is crazy, and it's potent. But that's not the hidden architecture and the magic of why this Full Moon on July 29th may be the most important Full Moon of if not this year, this decade or more. And again, does that mean things are gonna happen on this exact day? Well, time will tell. As you know, I try not to predict specific events because it leaves room for the magic to occur, and there's still a lot of time between now and the end of July when we can alter whatever it is that may happen around the Full Moon.
Venus Square Mars & Thor's Kite: The Hidden Architecture
Rick Levine: But here's the magic point. On the same day as this Full Moon, on July 29th, 2026, we have Venus squaring Mars. Now, Venus square Mars is not that uncommon of an aspect; it happens a couple of times a year. But Venus happens to be square Mars where their exact midpoint is at 6 degrees of Leo.
If you figure this out—I think we can do this in our minds, I'm almost tempted to pull up a chart, but I don't wanna be distracted by pictures here—if you can imagine Venus squaring Mars, their halfway point holds the Sun and Jupiter. I mean, like exact. Partile. Well, there's no such thing as partile because it's not a major aspect within the zodiac, because a half of a square is 45 degrees, so it's not like it comes out with the same number. This is where the math thing comes in, and you just gotta trust what the computer gives you.
It turns out that the Sun and Jupiter are 45 degrees to Venus on one side, and 45 degrees to Mars on the other side. 45 and 45 are 90. This is not higher math. A square is 90 degrees; half of a square is 45 degrees. So we have Jupiter and the Sun making half-squares (semi-squares) to Venus on one side and Mars on the other, while the Moon is exactly opposite it.
Mathematically, what that means is that if we have Mars, for example… We know the Sun and Moon are in opposition, which is 180 degrees. So if the Sun and Moon are 180 degrees apart and Mars is a half-square from one, it's gotta be a square and a half (a sesquiquadrate) to the other, because a square and a half plus a half-square makes an opposition.
So we have a situation where the Moon is a square and a half to Venus on one side and a square and a half to Mars on the other, with the Full Moon making a half-square to Venus on one side and a half-square to Mars on the other. This looks a lot like either a kite or a yod, where you have two planets at the base. In a traditional yod, you have two planets at 60 degrees, and then you have one planet at their opposite midpoint. If you take that 60-degree base and you widen it to 90 degrees, that then becomes what many people call Thor's Hammer, or some people call it an iron yod. It's a square at the base and a sesquiquadrate (one and a half squares) from each side up to the midpoint.
So you have this formation at this Full Moon that is like a Thor's Hammer with the Moon and Pluto at the apex and Venus and Mars making the base, but the Sun and Jupiter making that opposite point so it actually looks like a kite. I call it Thor's Kite.
And at that same time, that Sun-Moon opposition—the Full Moon—is not only defining the apex of this Thor's Hammer/Kite, but also holding in these sextiles and trines all at the same time. Now, we would get half this picture by just looking at the trines, sextiles, and opposition from Jupiter to Pluto with Venus and Neptune in it, but we would miss the fact that Venus and Mars are absolutely humming with this and creating immense stress and tension. People who work with semi-squares and sesquiquadrates know that they're not weak squares.
Remember, Venus and Mars are square, but together they're both semi- and sesquiquadrate squaring the Full Moon and the Sun. And so this is a day when something's gotta happen.
Amanda Walsh: Mm-hmm.
Rick Levine: That's how midpoints can add. I would imagine that when you start seeing the forecasts and start seeing astrologers talking about this Full Moon, everyone's gonna be talking about what an amazing Full Moon it is because Jupiter is so closely conjuncting the Sun, and the Full Moon itself is conjuncting Pluto, activating this whole Barbault's Basket that we've been living under the influence of for the entire month of July.
But almost no one is gonna talk about the stress from Venus and Mars. Some people might mention the fact that Venus and Mars are square the same day, 'cause it is the same day, but no one else is gonna mention the fact that this is tied up into this exact pattern.
Amanda Walsh: Wow.
Rick Levine: That's what you're missing if you're not looking at midpoints. Does that make sense? Was that too much, too fast?
Amanda Walsh: It does. No. I mean, as you were talking, I was just drawing in my journal 'cause I wanted to draw what you were saying. And actually physically doing that helped me understand the connections between everything and why it would even matter.
What I wanna know is, if someone was just looking at the Sun-Jupiter conjunct opposing the Moon-Pluto, and not bringing this Venus-Mars tension into it, how does that change your interpretation of this day? Does it just make it that much more extraordinary, or does it actually fundamentally change how you interpret it?
Rick Levine: Yes, yes, and yes. Okay. Yes, it makes it that much more extraordinary, but it also brings the other personal planets into something… I mean, obviously the Sun and the Moon are always personal energies, but it pulls in Mercury, Venus, and Mars. It brings in Venus and Mars by direct connection.
And where are Venus and Mars? Mars will be at 21 degrees of Gemini and Venus will be at 21 degrees of Virgo. What planet rules Gemini and Virgo? It's Mercury. Mercury has just turned direct at the time of the Full Moon, and it's in Cancer. And so it gives us this whole other flavor of this Full Moon that is still holding back on what it was that wasn't said with Jupiter in Cancer for an entire year, along with this Mercury retrograde in Cancer. And yet the Venus and Mars in Virgo and Gemini are like… it can be conflict, but it personalizes all this. Mercury, Venus, and Mars are how we think, what we like, and how we go get it. And so it brings this whole thing into a personal sphere.
This Full Moon is not just gonna be some detached, macro political change of scenario—which I think might or will happen—but I think this is a powerful example of what will unfold personally, and it'll take until August for us to look back and see what really happened here.
Amanda Walsh: Hmm. Okay. Fantastic. One more example?
Rick Levine: Oh, yeah. Yes, I can use your chart.
Amanda Walsh: Oh, yeah! It's already included in my book, so I know we're good.
Live Chart Reading: Midpoints in Action
Rick Levine: When one looks at your chart, there are things that we can see that stand out. This is not gonna be like an in-depth reading or anything; I just wanna bring up a couple of things that have to do with midpoints in your chart that my guess is you've never quite thought about, which might be food for thought or spark an immediate reaction. But more than anything, this'll show how midpoints can alter our sense of what we're looking at.
So, your chart—which like you said is in your book—you're a 29-degree Capricorn Sun, and your Sun is conjunct Venus, which is lovely. You know? You're lovely. What can I say? You got flowers behind you; that's part of your loveliness.
But Venus and the Sun in Capricorn by itself might actually show a fairly steady hand. I want to use the word “conservative,” but I don't want to use it in a political sense; I want to use it in the sense of conservation of energy. Following rules. Towing the party line. That would be a traditional Capricornian kind of energy.
But your Sun is partile quincunx to Saturn, which in a way just immediately tips my mind into thinking, okay, so you got this lovely Sun-Venus conjunction, but there's this constant irritation from this mosquito in the tent that won't let you sleep. That's Saturn buzzing around saying, “Yes, all these rules are important, but maybe they're more irritating than anything else at times.” There's an irritation adjustment factor to that Saturn quincunx. So that all becomes significant.
We can also look at your Aquarius rising, your Aquarius Ascendant, and say, okay, so there is obviously another side to that Saturn. In traditional astrology, Saturn would be the horoscope ruler—the ruler of the Ascendant. We moderns know that Uranus has a play in there also.
But the closest midpoint that you have in your chart—actually the two closest midpoints—are the midpoint of Uranus and Eris. Now, they don't really have a major direct aspect relationship in your chart; okay, they may be a really wide quincunx, but no one would spend time talking about the Eris-Uranus relationship in your chart normally. Because it turns out that the Eris-Uranus halfway point is exactly 29 degrees of Capricorn, right on your Sun.
Now, what do Uranus and Eris have in common? You can do this. Uranus and Eris?
Amanda Walsh: Shock? Like disrupting the—
Rick Levine: That's good enough, stop right there. Perfect. What about Eris? What did she do?
Amanda Walsh: Same. She disrupts the status quo.
Rick Levine: Yeah. They're both disruptors for very different reasons, but when they're working together via midpoint, they're exactly nailed to your Sun and Venus.
Amanda Walsh: Wow. That's pretty—does that make sense to you?
Rick Levine: That's pretty awesome, actually. Well, and in some ways, because Eris is involved, it's not just a matter of a personal, “I'm making myself feel better by exploding all of this.” It's like, “I want to do this because I want to integrate this at a higher level.”
Amanda Walsh: Wow. Yes. That is so interesting. All right.
Amanda Walsh: I was just reflecting on even just within my family unit—my family of origin—I so disrupt the status quo, you know? Like I never fit in.
Rick Levine: Okay, wait. It's gonna get better. Because if we take… Now, in your chart, you have a T-square that goes from the very end of Capricorn that is basically opposing Mars at the very beginning of Leo. It's kind of an out-of-modality aspect, and that's squaring to Chiron. So that's an interesting thing in itself, that your Mars is square Chiron from Taurus-Chiron. Happy Chiron return, by the way.
Amanda Walsh: Thank you.
Rick Levine: That Chiron in your chart squares Mars. All right? So it turns out that… let me get this here for a second. The Chiron-Mars… Let's hold the Chiron-Mars and come back to that just for a moment. That's the obvious thing about how your Mars is stressed.
But if we look at Eris to Mars, there's no direct aspect at all. They're not even close to anything. They're both in fire—your Eris is at 13 Aries and your Mars is at 2 Leo. You could say, all right, maybe they're trine, but with an 11 or 12-degree orb? Eh, I don't think so. But it turns out that your Eris-Mars midpoint is at 8 degrees of Gemini, conjoined your Moon! So the way we would write this in midpoint analysis would be:
Mars/Eris = Moon
And again, we see now Eris tied to Uranus on one side lined up with your Sun, and Eris on the other side lined up with your Mars. And of course, Mars is the dispositor of Eris because Eris is in Aries. Eris is gonna look to Mars to see where the hell it's going and what it's doing. And your Moon in Gemini is right at that midpoint.
We use that Moon—your natal Moon in Gemini in the 4th house of home, family, tradition, stability, and security—and we see that Mars and Uranus, through action, fire, initiation, and intuition, are going to blow up and explode that Moon in Gemini, which is gonna use its intellectual capability to stir things up to another level.
Amanda Walsh: Wow. I mean—okay. Do you see how midpoints work now?
Amanda Walsh: Yes. That's fascinating. You guys, I've never actually thought of Eris as a very prominent or important player in my chart at all. Whenever anyone talks about Eris, it's kind of like, “Okay, I get the archetype, I can totally understand it,” but I haven't personalized it to my chart. So that's fascinating that she—
Rick Levine: All right, we got one more piece to do before we let this go. There is also in your chart no major aspect connection between the Sun and Venus to Jupiter. It turns out, again, it's a wide quincunx of 150 degrees. But it turns out that Eris is at the midpoint of your Sun and Jupiter within three minutes of arc! That's $1/20$ of a degree.
So when your Sun and Venus, which are always together, are working with that Jupiter in Gemini, where are they working? They're working on Eris in the second house. Eris in Aries, creating. Eris tied up to your South Node. You've been here before on some level; this is something that plays back to the past. But again, Eris turns out to be a key, key player.
And before we let this go completely, I want to pull one other out of the air that is completely different, because Mercury in your chart is in Capricorn. Mercury in Capricorn thinks exactly what it is. In other words, I always think that if you asked different Mercuries to say a few words about a sofa, someone might say, “Oh, it looks comfortable,” or “Oh, the colors are awful,” or “Oh, it's a Georgian Victorian…” Everyone would have a different thing. Mercury in Capricorn just goes, “It's a sofa.” It just says what it is. Mercury in Capricorn uses language to describe things that are sensible—and I mean sensible meaning of the senses, okay?
Amanda Walsh: Mm-hmm.
Rick Levine: All right. So it turns out that the halfway point in your chart between Neptune and your Sun-Venus… If you look at your chart, you can see that they are on either side of your Mercury. Your Mercury is at early Capricorn. Your Neptune is in Sagittarius on one side, and your Sun-Venus is in Capricorn on the other side. Well, the mathematical halfway point between Neptune and the Sun-Venus is 7 degrees of Capricorn, right on your Mercury!
Which is why you can't shake the fact that when you go to your Mercury in Capricorn, you're not just gonna talk about the couch or the sofa. You're gonna talk about its spiritual implications, and you're gonna dream, fantasize, or imagine bringing in the past and the future to create vision and creativity around it that otherwise is simply not there in the chart.
Amanda Walsh: Wow.
Rick Levine: I'm done.
Amanda Walsh: Oh my God. So does everyone have midpoints that are important for them?
Rick Levine: Everyone has 100 of them, and a few of them are gonna hit somewhere. Yes.
Amanda Walsh: Okay. Yes. This is fascinating. I mean, Rick, you're really bringing in very new things for me just by talking about these midpoints.
Rick Levine: Yeah. And they are there always. In fact, when something in the sky comes across your Mercury, it's not just transiting your Mercury; it's transiting your Mercury, your Neptune, and your Sun and Venus all at the same time.
Amanda Walsh: Wow. Wow.
Rick Levine: You see how we misread a chart by getting distracted by the particles? You've heard me talk forever about particles and waves. Look at the chart and forget about this isolated aspect or that aspect. What's the hum? Because everything in your chart is humming together.
Amanda Walsh: You know, if anybody reads my book, you will see what Rick just said illustrated in every single story that I tell. It's like you just encapsulated so much of what I experience and what I share in that book. So that's fascinating. Thank you so much.
For anyone that wants to go deeper with this, I mean, this is really opening up a world of new possibilities. Here's what I always think about astrology: when there are new elements or new layers introduced to us about our chart, to me it's like, okay, you're ready for that additional layer of information. For whatever reason, you're ripe for that next level of information about yourself, about the universe, and about everything we're experiencing here.
So if you're interested in joining us for this, it's gonna be so much fun. As you can see, Rick, one of the things I love is how you can go from talking about how one of your favorite books when you were 14 was by a quantum physicist about math—which alone is so revealing—but then you go from this hardcore teaching about astrology and you'll just throw in these jokes that just make us giggle. It keeps it so fun and entertaining at all times. Thank you for that.
Why Midpoints Matter for Astrology's Future
Rick Levine: I want to say one other thing before we go, because this hits on the whole point of why we look at midpoints or why we look at harmonics. It has to do with the larger evolutionary transformation that humanity is going through during the 2020s. It really began 200 years ago, came to a peak of transformation back in the '60s, and then over the past decade or so has reached this point at which the dams are straining and breaking, no longer holding back this blast of consciousness.
And what's the blast of consciousness? It's that things that do not exist in a three-dimensional particulate form are just as important, or maybe even more important, because they are what's informing and creating the illusion of what we see as particles—as planets in signs and houses.
The reason why harmonics and midpoints are so important to what's evolving—and it's not just me, this has been developing all through the 20th century with a string of people who have done incredible work on midpoints and harmonics—is that we'll see by the end of the midpoints class why harmonics become so important. Because what happens when you have a midpoint that's at the center of two planets that are quintile, septile, or novile, but have other harmonic resonances that are really significant?
The transformation that we as a species are going through is from the physical into what was metaphysical and always considered “outside.” And now that metaphysical or outside is actually inside all of us and informing everything.
Amanda Walsh: God, we could go on and on about that for a long time.
Rick Levine: Let's do it, but not today.
Amanda Walsh: Yes, exactly. Even one thing I was thinking when you were speaking and bringing in what's happening on July 29th with that Full Moon, is that this is almost the equivalent of realizing that there aren't just isolated little body parts in our body operating on their own. Everything is working together.
Rick Levine: Of course it is.
Amanda Walsh: But it seems like we're just starting to realize that even within how we take care of our bodies. It's like, well, no—
Rick Levine: It's why we've had holistic medicine explode into our consciousness over the past few decades.
Amanda Walsh: Yes, yes, yes! And actually right now, the emphasis on the nervous system as being the underlying force behind all of it, and that being something less tangible.
Rick Levine: And the work on neurophysiology and epigenetics and all of that. Yeah, I mean, it all fits into why the changes that astrology is going through are not just based upon new technology and the ability to discover new techniques. It's part of the natural evolution that really began with the discovery of planets that we couldn't perceive with the naked eye: Uranus in the late 1700s, Neptune in the mid-to-late 1800s, then Pluto, and now Chiron, Eris, and so many other points that are out there.
As everything is discovered, at first it's considered like, “Nope, can't see them, not important. They're shadow.” All the outer planets that were discovered at first were considered to be negative, horrific, and terrible until we began to, in a Jungian manner, integrate the shadow into our being. And then all of a sudden, the deceit and psychosis of Neptune became spirituality and creative imagination, and so on. The same is true with midpoints.
Amanda Walsh: Mm. Amazing.
Midpoints Class Details + UAC Chicago 2026
Amanda Walsh: All right, you guys. Go to astrologyhub.com/midpoints. Check out the class. If you join for this live period starting July 16th, it's four weeks long. If you can't make the live sessions, it's totally okay; we send out the recordings within 24 hours. As a student in the class, you will have lifetime access to the recordings, so you'll be able to go back and revisit them over and over. Inner Circle members and Rick's Patreon members, you do get to use your discount codes, so check your email for that.
And also, if you wanna meet us in person, the Astrology Hub team and Rick are all gonna be at UAC in Chicago.
Rick Levine: The United Astrology Conference.
Amanda Walsh: Yes, United Astrology Conference. It's kind of like the Olympics of the astrological community. It's one of the biggest—
Rick Levine: I call it the grandmother of all astrology conferences. I think this is gonna be my seventh UAC that I've attended. They're only every three to five years.
Amanda Walsh: Right, and there'll be over 1,500 astrologers there. There'll be 160 teachers from about 35 different countries. And it's gonna be at the downtown Marriott in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile. It's gonna be fantastic. A week long, with something like 200 classes. Chani Nicholas is gonna be there as a keynote speaker. Yeah, I'm excited about this. A week-long lovefest of astrology.
Rick Levine: Not for me! It's gonna be a week-long workfest, too, because I have two classes and a post-conference workshop that I'm doing.
My post-conference workshop—which you don't have to attend the main conference to go to, but it has to be physical as it won't be broadcast—is on Revisioning Transits. It's not about midpoints; it's about looking at transits as recurring themes throughout our entire life instead of isolated events, much like we shouldn't look at planets as isolated organs or points. When we say, “I'm gonna have this transit coming up,” it's never by itself. We can go back through our entire life and map out the sequence of what brought us to this exact point.
Amanda Walsh: I love that. I do hope, Rick, though, that we can have our traditional UAC lunch together.
Rick Levine: Yes.
Amanda Walsh: And for those who don't know what we're talking about, we met at UAC for the first time in Chicago, what, six years ago? 2018?
Rick Levine: Seven, eight years ago. Yeah.
Amanda Walsh: Yeah, amazing. Okay, well, hope to see you guys there. Hope to see you in the midpoints class. And Rick, you're amazing. Thank you so much for being here.
Rick Levine: Aw, and thank you. So are you. We love you so much.
Amanda Walsh: Thanks to all of you for being a part of our community. Thank you for making astrology a part of your life, and we'll look forward to connecting with you on the next episode. Take care, everyone.