Practical Astrological Magic is Real

In this Cosmic Connection, Astrologer Rick Levine and Amanda ‘Pua’ Walsh discuss how to invoke planetary ennrgies into your life to manifest desired outcomes.

You’ll learn …

• The philosophy of remediation and how to use it to achieve balance
•  About the historical background of astrological practical magic
•  Why you are more than just one planet in a sign

Chapters 📺

0:00 Intro

9:01 Introducing Marsillio Ficcino

23:28 Thomas Moore’s Work on the Soul

30:11 The Saturn Story of Lorenzo il Magnifico

39:50 Caroline Casey’s Make The Gods Work for You

49:08 What is Logos

54:21 Invoking and Tempering Planets

1:04:38 Summary

📖 Want to Learn w/ Rick Levine?

Transcript

This transcript is automatically generated. Some miswording might be present.

And Professor Richard Tarnas why he’s so inspired to teach his upcoming workshop, your astrological initiation with his daughter, Becca. And this is what he said,

I just saw this as, as the Becca a great opportunity to try to provide a way of understanding what the astrological mystery is about. We’re hoping to give those who are in the workshop, a sense of, of grounding of foundations of a larger framework of understanding within which their adventure in Astrology can unfold with with greater fruitfulness. It’s a powerful tool. And so we want to give a sense for the great privilege, and therefore also responsibility that comes with astrology. To see its nobility and just enter recognize how to present the information that we get from our astrological study to do that in a way that is true to his highest potential. If you’re

interested in getting the perspective and wisdom you need to ensure that you’re always using astrology for good and minimizing its potential for harm, then this workshop is for you. You can learn more and join us now at astrology. hub.com/initiation class starts soon, so make sure to check it out now at astrology hub.com/initiation. Rick and Becca can’t wait to see you in class.

Welcome to the Cosmic Connection. This is your place to explore the beauty and order of the cosmos and your connection to it all. My name is Amanda Pua Walsh and I’m the founder of astrology hub.

And I’m Rick Merlin living your cosmic navigator.

Now let’s dive in.

Let’s do it

all right. Hello, everyone. It’s so great to be here with all of you. Thanks for tuning in. And of course, I’m very, very excited to be here with Rick Merlyn, Levine, and Rick, anything that you want to share about Richard Tarnas, his work and Becca Tarnas. Before we dive into the topic today, which is going to be about invoking planets. But

yeah, two things before I do that, I just wanted to say to people who say I’m not in my regular environment. I am at an astrology gathering in Lilydale, New York. And I’m at the home of Dr. Patricia Bell, who is one of the Lilydale psychic mediums who has graciously offered her space for us to record this this evening. So yes, I am not in my normal place, but I still have flowers. Number Number Two about Rick and Becca Tarnas. I have to say, I’ve known Rick for probably 20 years longer than I’ve known his daughter, Becca. And Rick, as many of you people may know, is the co director of a doctoral program, a Ph. D. Program at the California Institute of integral studies, which Rick co directs with Dr. Stan Grof. And I have to say that I read Stan graphs first book Beyond the brain, while I was still a senior in studying psychology in college, so that would have been 1971. So I know Stan, I don’t know personally, but I know a stands work for probably 20 years more than I’ve even known of Rick Tarnas. His point being that Rick, I think holds a very, very important place in the astrological world because of his academic lineage and because of his academic work. And interestingly, Becca as a gen two or second generation, astrologer academic is really it’s really exciting to see that torch being passed down generationally I saw Becca at the ESR conference a couple of weeks ago in Denver. Her work is extra ordinary. And I am very excited about about listening to how the two of them put together what they may be putting together for the first time in this kind of format. So I am excited about it. And I’m going out of my way to make sure that I get to listen and watch. I’m fans of both of their works. Were both of their work. Yes.

We did a podcast episode with Becca that was released yesterday. And if you want to hear some back stories of the work that Rick’s done with Stan Grof, if you want to, I mean, it was an incredible episode, I just, I was like buzzing for days after we recorded. So, so check that out. That’s, that’s on the podcast with Becca Tarnas. And then we had Rick Tarnas, the week before, which was also an amazing episode. And Rick, I loved before we went live, Rick Levine said, Hey, can I get access to that class? Like, I’d like to join you. And it’s not every day that the astrologers want to join each other’s classes. So I felt like that said a lot. And yeah,

yeah, well, you know, Rick’s work is so important. Most people know of him from cosmos and psyche. And don’t realize that that is his jeez, oh, no third or fourth book, third book, I think that his book on Prometheus as the correctly named Uranus, as an astrological treatise, is very powerful. And his books have on the history, his, you know, without astrology, and it has the, what’s the right word, it’s an auspicious enough work that Joseph Campbell, the Joseph Campbell, wrote on the back cover, you know, of his first magnificent history book. This is like the best book on Intellectual History of the West ever written.

So and that was a passion of the Western mind.

Thank you The passionate passion of the Western mind. And in a way it is the it is a history of the intellect of the West, of which cosmos and psyche is a revisitation. To that, but weaves in the outer planet cycles of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, into these great historical changes. And in the work is encyclopedic, it’s, it’s, I think, will go down in history as one of the most important books ever written, if I mean, and I’m not saying that as a hyperbole, it is, it is an incredibly important book for the astrology world.

And we are so honored that Rick and Becca are trusting this platform, astrology hub and our community to, to to share there. So hoping that as many of you as possible can join us. It’s next September, it’s next Wednesday, September 21. It is a four hour workshop with a break, and it will be recorded. So if you can’t join live, you’ll have access to it in your online library. If you’re an inner circle member, you do get your 20% off, make sure you enter that in. And the link once again is astrology hub.com/initiation. All right. So if you’re watching this, sorry, if you’re watching this later, and September 21 2022 is already passed, you can still get access to the recording. Okay, so let’s talk about today. Our Cosmic Connection topic is something that Rick loves to talk about and has been talking about for years. And I reached out to him and said, Let’s do an episode on this. And it’s the idea that we can invoke different planetary energies based on the situation we’re in, and the energy that we need. So if we’re in a situation where we need more Saturn, we can call on more Saturn, if we need more Mars, more Pluto, whatever it is, we can actually invoke those planetary energies. So Rick, how did you ever start exploring this and tell us a little bit about the idea? Well,

now that I think about it, it’s kind of interesting, because the origins of this work actually goes back to my first meeting, Rick Tarnas. No, I and I, it didn’t dawn on me until just now. Because there is a key figure in the astrological world or in the development of astrology in the history of astrology, that I’ve mentioned here, once, twice, maybe even three times and even talked about him in a way that that honors the respect that we modern astrologers should have for this man. And the man that I’m speaking of, is a Florentine. That would be forenza or Florence, Italy, at the time of what we call the Italian Renaissance, or the Florentine Renaissance. This man’s name is Marsilio Ficcino. And going back about about 20 to 25 years ago, there was a group of astrologers that were in attendance to the various international astrology conferences, including you whack you a C, which is the which was then the United astrology Congress. And at this particular us back one of my friends who shared this interest in the work of Marsilio Fujino, a woman named Barbara Shermer, who has now graduated from the earthly plane, and is no longer with us. Barbour had a book out called astrology alive. And it was about exercises to make astrology come alive in the real world. And in some ways, her book was inspired by the work of this Italian Renaissance, Priest, astrologer, healer, Magic Man, translator of Plato, this guy was single handedly responsible for translating Plato from the Greek into the Latin and infusing Plato into the Western tradition into the Western thought. This is in the 1480s 1490. So late 15th century, and a group of astrologers who shared an interest in the work of this man Marsilio Fujino, who I will say more about in a few minutes, got together, it was kind of like a private invitation event. And just so that we could all acknowledge and share that we were all geeking out on the same guy that outside of a small group of people, not many people seem to know about Marsilio Fujino. And, and Rick was one of the people in that original group. And I think it might have even been Barbara Shermer, who said, I you know, you guys need to meet, I need to introduce the two of you. And so it goes goes way back. I hadn’t even thought about that. Until, until just now, how interesting.

And then you can you hear me? And then you made a comment before we went live that this is actually astrological magic, like what you’re referring to what you’re talking about, and bringing astrology alive into our life on a daily basis, is astrological magic. So can you explain that a little bit?

Yes. And this is also we’ve touched on some of this stuff in different directions and other discussions that we’ve had. So some people might recognize some of the material that that I’ll be talking about today is, oh, yeah, I think I’ve heard him say this, but we’re coming at it from a slightly different direction. And basically, the short version of it is that astrology historically, has been about ascension. It’s been about knowing the mind of God, it’s been about predicting the future. And again, to the ancients, it was very simple. Everything that was here on the earth plane was not godly, then everything up there in heaven, was of what they called the Divine Proportion. It was godly. And, and there’s an old woodcut that probably most people have seen. That is a picture of some people on earth reaching up, and one of them is actually reaching through these spheres that are going up into the heavens. And this is representative of the around the time that Copernicus initiated this change of, of cosmology, of understanding that we are not in the center of the universe, that in fact, we’re not even in the center of this little neighborhood we live in the sun is in the center and all the planets are going around it. And that when Johann is Kepler figured out the laws of planetary motion, it was like humans breaking in through this barrier that kept humans here and god or gods there, and it was like we were breaking through into the godly or heavenly realms. And so understanding that the ancient astrologer In some way, practise the astrology to ascend into the heavens, to know what God was thinking, or to know what the future might bring by studying the movement of the planet, because only God would know what was in the future. But all of this was about reaching upward, about ascending about learning the godliness. And, and the interesting thing here is that it was Marsilio for Chino, who translated Plato. And Plato had a very, very specific understanding of the relationship between life here on Earth, and whatever it was up in the heavens. And that, and that it was actually not a one way street, of humans trying to ascend into the realms of godliness by living perfect lives and dying and going to heaven. But it was also about how the heavenly realm could be brought into the earthly sphere into the earthly plane, if you will. And in fact, Plato very, very clearly, and specifically defined the words, soul, and spirit. And many modern owners don’t understand the difference, or they make up the difference, or they’ve read something and they think they know what the difference is. But with Plato’s understanding, it was very specific, and it’s absolutely required to know what that difference was to be able to work with the planet planets in our pocket, which we will get to in just a moment. So it’s, it works like this, that when we’re trying to ascend into into the godly realms, when we’re trying to live holy lives and become God, like, this is all about ascension, and ascension, is built into a lot of the religion. Certainly, Catholicism or the Judeo Christian tradition has this whole concept of wanting to ascend to get higher. Even Tibetan Buddhism is like it’s even Tibet is ascended, you know, it’s very high up off the earth plane, almost as if it was closer to Heaven. And we talk about the Ascended Masters, those those teachers who exist in non physical form, who have left the earth body and ascended. And so it turns out, that in the platonic way of understanding this, and in the Neoplatonic way, in other words, there wasn’t just Plato, it was the, it was Plotinus, and Plato students and their students and, and so on. That it basically is spirit that is, ascending. Spirit is is is uplifting. If something is spiritual, it pulls us out of the lowly realms of our physicality, physicality, and up into the into the ethers up into the heavens up into the godly realms. And it turns out that spirit, in the Platonic sense, is associated with the young or sometimes masculine. And I don’t mean that gender wise I mean, that energetic wise, that the elements of air and fire are the elements of spirit, because fire and air move upward.

Now compare that with soul, which moves downward soul is how the heavens move into the physical being. Soul is what exists in our body while we are alive. But but we we want to reach upward with spirit. Spirit moves upward fire and air, soul is the Yin or the feminine, and it’s downward moving, it’s inward moving, and soul is associated with water and earth. And so you have a, let’s say, a spiritual area of the planet, like, like the lamas live up in the mountains of Tibet, or even the fact that there’s a Buddhist College in Boulder, Colorado. It’s high in try. It’s spiritual, it’s up lifting, but it may not be very soulful soul exists where it’s down dirty and wet. Seattle is soulful, if not spiritual, in New Orleans, you know, the muddy Mississippi River, everything flushes down to New Orleans. And that is that, that it’s soulful. It’s soul music that’s being in the body, which is complicated and, and wet and emotional. And it’s very different. Can you see the difference between spirit and soul. And this is absolutely basic to understand what we’re going to talk about as practical astrological magic, because normally, when we’re looking at predicting the future, we’re telling someone their path in life, this is about ascending, this is about reaching upward into the unknown evidence. And yet there is another side to it. And it was our man Marsilio for Chino, who may have been the first astrologer who understood that remember, he translated Plato, from Greek into Latin, and he had the richness of learning things. And of course, anyone who’s a student of history knows that during this time, the pope actually arranged for the King of Naples to declare war on Florence, because he was so upset that these guys were, were worshipping books that were not the Bible. You know, they were they were, this was like, in some ways, for Chino was really the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Even though that didn’t happen for almost 100 years, there was the infusion, not only of Plato into the Western European world, but also it was Marsilio for Chino, who translated a document that was smuggled out of Constantinople, which is now it’s done bull, which is called the Corpus Hermeticum. The secret of the, you know, of the work of Hermes, Hermes Trismegistus, the thrice great armies, the teacher of ancient Egypt, and this magical material, was also part of the chinos work. So for Chino is basically protected and is a his his benefactors, were the Medici family. And they sent him to the University of Bologna. And he came back as a learned scholar in Latin and Greek, I say, came back for he came back to Florence. And he was an ordained priest. He was a fully ordained Catholic priests, but he also was totally into magic and amulets and healing and Orphic hymns that, you know, that would be sung and would have healing properties, then he was totally into astrology, he was the court astrologer for nearly three generations of melted cheese. And so, so Marsilio for Chino becomes the first known Western astrologer who’s actually talking about what we might learners might call experiential astrology. In other words, actually feeling the planets and working with them, not just looking at a chart and imagining what it might be.

And this also relates to Thomas Moore’s work correct. So that was, that was where you’re gonna go next, the planets within which, if you’re interested in hearing, I asked that question to Thomas Moore about the difference between spirit and soul. And his answer was similar to yours, Rick, but yours is actually even more clear

for me, of course, because I learned it from him and he learned it from Marsilio Fujino, who learned it from Plato. I mean, it that’s, that’s the trade it’s, you know, it is all the same thought. And by the way, the subtitle of that book, and many people know Thomas Moore from terror, the soul and soulmates and the reinstatement of soul in everyday life and dark, dark soul. And but Thomas Moore before he wrote any of the soul books, wrote this book that you refer to called the planet within. Now, let’s just stop there for a second, because now we’re taking the sky, and we’re pulling it down into our bodies into our lives, the planets within but the subtitle of that book, The subtitle of the book is the astrological psychology of Marsa Leo Fujino. The full title of the book is the planets within colon, the astrological philosophy of Marsilio Fujino Wow, the astrological psychology I’m sorry. Marsilio Ficino so here is the, basically the background of you know of, of why this is so important. And remember for Chino, although he’s not a well known name for many people, he was singularly the architect of what we call the, the, the Florentine or Italian Renaissance Marsilio for Chino was the guy who was teaching Bata Celli which gods to place where in which painting so they were all tutelage is that we’re all basically by to Charlie’s paintings were basically capturing the work of the Chino so that it would be captured in art and therefore it could be taught. And so you can imagine, you know, by the Celli meeting with, for Chino, like every day for weeks at a time taking notes, and then going back and sketching something coming back to bite a jelly. And by the Celli going, well, this is good, except this person needs to be standing to the left of that person, because bla bla bla bla. And so the, the arrangement of what was going on then, with Marsilio, for Chino, conducting these once a month gatherings where all the priests and all the bishops of Northern Italy would come to what what was basically one of the meta chi summer homes, one of their villas, and the old man Kazim Omega chi, the grandfather, meta chi, if you will, gave this villa to Marsilio, for Chino, with the command of this villa shall be yours for the rest of your life, in what with one condition, and that is you turn it into a living platonic Academy. And so the priest would come to study the latest that he had translated from Plato as he was translating the work and, and it was like, Oh, my God, this isn’t the Bible. But this is really important, because it fits with the Bible. And yet, it shows that there was something before the Bible that was really powerful and spiritual. So it was into this that the Chino comes as an ordained priest, doing astrology, writing these Orphic hymns, and allegedly playing them, and people who heard him singing, these hymns were transformed. He did magic he did had amulets, and used herbs, and magical healing. And, and he was the man. So let’s just talk just a quick moment about how he did the astrology that he did. And I want to make my first point here, by sharing with you. A number of years ago, I was teaching up in British Columbia up in Vancouver, and there’s a wonderful bookstore in Vancouver called the banyan tree. And the banyan tree, of course, is with the tree under which Buddha became aware or self realized. And, and when I go to the banyan tree, I always end up I gravitate eventually to the cabinet that’s under lock and key where all the expensive books are. I hate that part about me. But I do. I ended up there. And there I was, just had to have been 15 years ago or more. And I’m looking at the books. And I see there are these three books next to each other with book covers that are very ornately drawn, and I’m looking at them, and the and they are volumes, one, two, and three of the complete letters of Marsilio Ficino. And I went oh no. And I called over the, the desk clerk or the you know, the helper person there. Then I said, I’d like to look at these books. And she came with the lock and key or the lock. She came with the key and opened up the lock. And I took out the books one at a time and thumb through him. And I said to myself, I have to have these. And I said kind of like how much are they? And she gave me a figure that was like bizarrely low. There was something something like $35 and, and or something like that. 35 $40 Maybe, and I said, move $40 times three that’s 102 I’m thinking in my head, and she goes no, no, no, no, that’s $40 for all three and I didn’t want didn’t sound too eager, because I thought that might make her realize that maybe it couldn’t be. But I said,

Okay, I’ll take them. And I bought all three of them for a total of like $40. I still haven’t had them out just the other day, a friend had come over and I was showing, I was reading, looking for one of the letters in particular, but these letters are in there or Nate. Well, I mean, the writing is there in there in Latin and English each letter. And when I say ornate, I don’t mean the swirls on the letters, although those two there but the language, you know, and they’re in their letters to the Pope’s, their letters to other bishops to cardinals, their letters, their letters to his benefactor to mark to Lorenzo Metalogix, Lorenzo, Lorenzo, il magnifico, Lorenzo the great. And in the end, the letters would start off like, dear, esteemed holy, Lorenzo, who holds the power of the world in his magnificent hands from your lowly serve, I mean, those those kinds of things, you know. And, and there were a few letters that caught my eye moreso than others. And one of them that I remember, said, You know, you know, dear Lorenzo, I wanted to write you this letter. Now remember, there were only, I mean, in a car, you can make the trip from Karachi down to the, to the meta chi. Pallas, you know, in like, 20 minutes, in those days, it probably was like four hours, maybe by horse, maybe six hours. I mean, it was a bit of a journey. But they sent letters back and forth almost every day. And so this letter said, you know, basically, it was, you know, hey, Lorenzo, I need to tell you what was going on, because I didn’t tell you something very important last week, but I didn’t tell you for a reason. And I’m telling you now for a reason. And what I didn’t tell you was that you were about to go into a period of time of great adversity because of transiting Saturn affecting your natal Venus. And he wrote to him in this language, because remember, Lorenzo was brought up with Fujino as his tutor. So he knew what he was talking about. And he said that that with with Saturn transiting your natal Venus, this could be very difficult because I know your sad turn nine nature and I know how serious you can get. And so rather than bothering you and telling you this in advance, I simply communicated with your court to make sure that there was extra beautiful music playing all the waking hours than that then that you are surrounded by more flowers than usual. So that the the input of Venus would help ameliorate the difficulty that you might be feeling from the malefic rays of Saturn. Wow. Okay. Now do you understand how totally different this is than an astrologer saying you’re going to have three days that are really awful?

Wow. Yes. I mean, that’s that’s where these ideas of remediating right remediating certain energies.

Well, in Vedic Astrology, there is a whole thing of remediation, remediating negative energies. But that is a little different. But but it is similar in some ways, whether it’s done by gemstones, or amulets, or or chanting by mantra, or by holding the hands. Mudra is in certain positions. These are always of remediation. But here we have this in a western tradition for the first time that we see. And we see it done in a way that is so skillful, that the person who was going through this difficult time may have felt taken care of.

Completely. Yes, even. Wow, now that’s a friend. Yeah, exactly. So this this was one of the early inspirations for you reading this letter to come up have this idea of planets in your pocket.

Well, yes. And I would go back even further, I would say that reading Thomas More’s the plan It’s within back before I even knew who Thomas Moore was, then back before I knew who fit Chino was. And then on top of that, way back at the beginning, when this group of us got together, Rob hand who’s a very well known, brilliant may be one of the most brilliant or the most brilliant astrologers on the planet. When I talked about you, I really want to read some Fujino directly of his, what did he write? Well, it turns out that his major life work was called Three, three books on life, three books of life, three books on life, I think. And that book, two of the three books was most of his astrological stuff. But it was stuff about amulets and and magical healing and the use of magic in healing. And, and Rob told me at that time, there are numbers of translations. But the to get is from the University of New York at Buffalo, there is a translation of the chinos three books of life, that page by page have Latin on one side, and English translated on the other. So you have the entire book in its original published Latin form, with the English on the page facing it. And, and I, and I’m not a Latin scholar, although I can pick out words here and then I am, I am absolutely not a Latin scholar. But I became fascinated with this book, because of the orientation, not so much of remediation, but of, of bringing the energy of the planets into the body and working with it. Now, this takes another huge leap forward in the early mid 20th century with the works of Carl Gustav Jung, because although we didn’t learn until a half a century, later how astrologically oriented Jung was, we knew that he was astrologically oriented, but we know that what he was doing was actually working with these planetary archetypes or energies. And again, bringing them into the body and into awareness, we bring the planets into our body all the time. In fact, every laughter, every ripple of joy, every ache, every pain that we have in our body, in some ways, are the in carnation of the archetypal energies of the various planets. And, and so yielding certainly is part of or maybe the next step in this whole process. But going back to the to the chinos work and even Thomas Moore’s work, there’s this realization of astrology is not just about aspiring towards being a better Moon in Sagittarius, or being a, you know, better or more efficient Mars in Virgo. There’s another whole aspect to it. And that has to do with bringing those planets that are in the sky, into our body for real, and actually experiencing them physically, and what do we do with them. So that became really the opening for what became my you know, kind of analogy is planets in your pocket. But there are many other astrologers who do what we might call astrological magic, or practical astrological magic. In fact, many astrologers who do this sort of practice, work at the exact right time, so that you actually pick a moment in time through the astrological tools that we have. And then we either make something which we call a talisman, we actually make something that holds the intentions of that moment, or we do a ritual or an action in that moment, that actually brings those planets from up there, down into here and then we can express them incarnate them and express them bodily.

And so it’s, there is a greater work I mean, even a lot of the medieval astrology uses this sort of magic. It Caroline Casey, a number of years ago called a wrote a book called, working with the God working, working with the gods, she killed me if I can’t remember if you know, I can’t remember the name, so someone will look it up and posted, I’m here, I want to say working with the gods or. But it’s basically using the planet gods and and working with them in our everyday life. And Caroline, in which he talks about that book and works with the energy, she has one of my favorite lines when it comes to this kind of stuff. And that is you can’t just use language, because the gods don’t speak English. And then she adds, Ah, thank you. Thank you Zanna is that Siddhanta or is that Zanna make the Gods work for you is Caroline’s book thank you so much, but making the Gods work for you. But it’s the same kind of concept to little bit different than than what I’m talking about. But it’s the same thing of using the the astrological energies and manifesting them in our lives. But we Caroline would say the gods don’t speak English. And then she would say parenthetically, they don’t even speak Spanish. But this is this is basically an important piece of understanding how we work with the planets in our pocket.

So you gave the great example of Feng Shui now bringing flowers and beautiful music to it seems like to if it’s not remediate, then it would be more invoke more of what Venus loves to potentially mitigate the effects of that Saturn transit.

Right, which means we can do the same in our own lives. We don’t need the astrologer this is the point. We see. So now backing up a step. It is my contention. The end is my contention based upon what I’ve picked up from so many astrologers and philosophers, who are wiser and more practiced than than I. But we each have each and every planet in our pocket. Always. It’s not about size. How does Bigelow Jupiter fit in our pocket? Well as how does the entire universe fit in our head? You know, we’re not little drops inside of an immeasurable universe, we are large enough to contain the entire universe inside of us. And as such, we hold each and every one of the planets in our pocket, always. Now we may have to me Well, for some people, astrology is what makes us different. Oh, I could never be like that my Mars is in Gemini and I could never be like that Virgo, or Gee, I could never be like that my Jupiter is in Scorpio. And, and that’s who I am. No, that’s the course of least resistance. What we learn from astrology is not I am like this, what we learned is, there are 12 ways in which I can be and without thinking I consciously become this. But there are 11 Other ways that I can be if I learned how to express that planetary energy in each of the other planetary science. So i By the way, Ren just said, making the Gods work for you is narrated by Caroline herself. She is hilarious. And she is and it is a really good book. And Caroline’s work is really good. Just one of the high points of my life was leading or CO facilitating an eight day workshop in Bali, Caroline and I did together and it was it was intense and crazy, but really very, very powerful. Anyhow. The, the idea is that if I’m going to the bank, and I’m going to get a loan for my small business, and and I’m really concerned because my profit for the last few months wasn’t what I had projected. And I’m kind of like I’m heavy on myself. I’m hard and you know, I’m kind of like Feeling like, like, you know, things aren’t going right and God, this is the bank, they’ll they’ll probably won’t give me them the loan because they’re gonna want more than what I have. And then you can go into this whole negative space. And if you walk into the bank and sit down with a, you know, the, the banker, even if you have all your spreadsheets done, you know, right and whatever, and you’re feeling like totally down and out, and like, you’ll never get the money. Well, guess what, you’ll never get the money. And so this is a prime example of how if we understood how all this worked, and if we understood that, in fact, Jupiter is the god of optimism. Jupiter is the archetype Jupiter is about expanding one’s mind, it’s about seeing potential and possibilities. It’s about looking out and seeing what could be there, rather than what is there, Jupiter is a magnifying lens, it makes anything and everything bigger, and better and more. And so if I on my way to the bank, I’m not only thinking about Jupiter, but I’m actually embodying Jupiter, that I can, in effect, I’m taking that planet out of my pocket. And I’m putting it on, as if I’m a

five foot tall, old woman in the 1300s, who conjures this energy up so big and so intense that the fiercest warriors of the village are afraid of this woman. Because when she goes into that sacred space, she looks like a 10 foot giant, because that’s how big or energy is. This is basically it’s, it’s like conjuring up a charm. It’s like, you know, it’s like using that whole, that energy to make oneself into something different than what one is physically. But you can’t do it just with language. So if Jupiter is about expansion, and Jupiter is about, you know, potential and possibility, well, gee, my five minute walk from that, where I parked my car to the bank, instead of just walking regularly, what if I consciously took steps that were 25% bigger than the steps I would normally take. In other words, I’m just, I’m not walking step, step, step, step, I’m walking step by step, I’m taking bigger steps. And as I’m doing that, I’m also breathing a little bit deeper than putting my arms and swinging them and kind of actually just getting my body in motion with something that’s bigger than what I am or what I feel. You see, because the key to doing any of these rituals, although intention is great, and it’s a first step, there has to be some sort of physical action. It’s like, it’s like going to the old water pump. And it doesn’t matter how hard you pump, nothing happens, until you pour a cup of water into the pump while you’re pumping. And you use that water to prime the pump. Well, in practical magic, we have to figure out ways in which we can prime the ritual. And so whatever it is that we’re doing, that we want to bring that planet out into the open that we want to take that planet out of our pocket, we have to give the planetary Gods goddesses archetypes, something to chew on. So that you know that that in a way, it’s not just language, it’s not just making a list. It’s not just saying out loud, although saying out loud is an important thing. Because that basically gives form, you know, in the Bible, you know, in the beginning, there was the word.

And that’s a lousy translation of the Aramaic, which was in the beginning, there was logos. And logos isn’t just a word. It’s a word that vibrates the form of something that is so truthful, that when you vibrate its form it manifests. And in a way, when we’re looking to prime the pump, that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for those physical inroads for things to manifest, but it has to begin by learning the planets and learning what the architects what the archetypes are, if I’m going to write a letter to a boss, you know, asking for, you know, a raise or or pleading a case on something or we’re writing a sales letter to a publishing company that I want them to print My new book or whatever it is, well, this is mercury, because mercury is the archetype or the God of, you know, of, of thinking of interacting, of sending and receiving information, then yes, Devin, I am a Gemini rising. And somehow or other, I make this on occasion look easier than it is. But the fact of the matter is that anyone can practice. And they get better at what they practice. And this astrological magic is about taking a planetary archetype, like mercury, so you may not have Gemini rising, you know, you know, you may not have Virgo rising, you may have no planets in mercury and Virgo. But I can tell you that you go down the list of great writers. And although you might find more of them with with planets, in Gemini and Virgo, you’ll find great writers with no planets in Gemini and no planets in Virgo. Why? Because everyone has mercury in their chart somewhere. And it’s a matter of finding out how you prime your own Mercury pump. And everyone does it differently. But as you practice, you begin to realize that sitting down to write doesn’t work for me, unless I sit down to write and play my favorite song for five minutes without writing, and then have a cup of tea. And then somehow it’s okay for me to write. Now, I’m not saying that everyone does that, either. I’m saying everyone has their own rituals that they can use that no one can tell you what they are, it’s when you when you first come up with what the planets are, what you’re trying to do. And then as you explore them, we each develop our own rituals to bring that particular planet into focus out of our pocket and into the real world. And it works the other way too. Because what happens if I’m the kind of person, okay, so I’m four planets in Aries. And you might think that I’m always getting into verbal fights with people because I have Gemini rising. And, and I do like to verbally spar. However, I’ve learned that there are times when I should not do that, because it gets in the way. So I have to learn how to create some sort of ritual for myself, by taking that Mars out of the interaction between the two of us off my surface, and actually stuff it back into my pocket, I’d rather have some Venus showing now, that just simply allows me to listen to what you’re saying, to take it in without having kind of false boundaries of feeling like I need to argue with you or be one up or whatever. And so the point here is, is by using these planetary archetypes and thinking of them in our pocket, there are times to take Pluto out of our pocket and manifest it in certain intense situations where I really need that power, intensity, even life death, kind of like I’m willing to go there, wherever it is. And there’s time for me to take that Pluto out of my pocket. But there are times that I need to take that Pluto and put it away somewhere so that it doesn’t get in the way of what it is I’m trying to do it works both ways.

Was that the opening volley? It’s so good. Okay, as you’re speaking, the the, the words, what would Jupiter do? Or what would Mars do or? What? So can you give us a few more examples? Those are great examples of Jupiter, you know, kind of walking with the big strides. I know everyone needs to explore this on their own and really find the rituals that work for them. But can you give us a few more examples to sort of ensure

sure and and by the way, although it’s not in print, you can find Barbara Shermer has astrology alive, which talks about various exercises to actually conjure up some of these planetary energies. There was also the dances done by Sufis, American Sufis in San Francisco in the I think pretty much late 60s and 70s. And some in some of them were called the dances of peace dances, and there were planet dances. And then there were planet walks and here’s here’s one of the things Things to think about is, and what I do my long form workshops wherever they are in the world. And they will come back probably in 2023, as we kind of separate ourselves from whatever the strange, you know, COVID thing of the extended March of 2020, that seems to have lasted a couple of years. But this is one of the things that we do in those workshops. And that is, we, we imagine that we are different planets and I have different music for each of the planets, my choice of music, but one of the things that we can do is, depending on your musical tastes, begin to make a list. And for some planets, it’d be real easy, you know, really easy to think of, you know, a song for, for mercury, Paul McCartney’s temporary Secretary comes to my mind is just dTT it’s like this really high frequency pitch thing. A Song for Mars, Queens. What’s that I’m a rocket ship. To Mars. Don’t stop me now. That’s like a brilliant Mars. Don’t stop me now. Brilliant Mars song. We can come up with songs that that represent for us the different planets. But that’s just the first step. The second step. And yes, you can do this when you’re home alone, and no one’s watching. Or you can do it in a group of other astrologers, then you can put on music and then dance to the different planets, or even just walk. Imagine, we talked about walking on Jupiter extending one stride. In fact, this is one of the one of the exercises that Jeff and I used to do. Jeff Jarrah, when he and I were teaching together, we would basically have people walk like Jupiter, large room, you know, kind of large circles, and they’re walking with big strides in their, you know, chests are up in there, you know, kind of like they’re doing their Jupiter thing, and then we go Saturn. And that meant you had to get serious and use people like would walk more rigid, almost like, like marching like, you know, in precision kind of, but with determination that we would just call out the different planets. And you would just try to embody that planet, how would you walk if you were walking like Venus? Well, you might walk with, with movement, and maybe even a couple of trolls, I can’t because I’m tethered. But, but Venus is more softer, more gentle, or walk. And then if you’re walking like Mars, in a large group of people, you’d be purposely bumping into people, and they’d be speeded up. And one of the exercises that I love doing with a group of people, is to have everybody take the name of their moon sign, my moon is in cancer, I would write cancer on a piece of paper, invisible piece of paper, you can’t see it, but it says cancer,

everybody would write their moon sign on a piece of paper. And then everybody would stand in front of one other person. So you need either an even number of people in the group or one person is always left out. But you would find someone in the group, and you would stand in front of that person. And there would be no words communicated nothing, except that person would see that your moon is in cancer, and you would see that their moon is in Aquarius, or in you know, Aries or whatever. And you would just stand there and you would look at each other until you got a feeling that you could actually feel their moon. The thing was no words because the moon is just responding. I’m responding to what your moon sign is you’re responding to what my moon sign is, because the Moon is about receptivity and reflection. So in this group, you would do that and stand in front of every single person one at a time, you know, if there were 20 or 30 people in the group, that this exercise could take 20 minutes to a half an hour, because you want enough time for each person to stand in front of each person. And then at the end, it’s all over. You talk about it and you realize how different your experiences were with people, even people that you normally knew and could talk to. All of a sudden there was no words there was just a feeling and reflection. There were some people you got in front of and you just couldn’t. It was almost like you were both trying to avoid each other. And then someone else it was like just easy to sink right into them. And then another person was like, for some reason, one person and then both people were crying. And then with another person, you’d be laughing. And you see, but the thing is, is that with the moon, there’s no language. So we can do this, but not in that artificial exercise, we can do this just by simply consciously saying, I’m going to be the moon. Now, I’m going to just absorb, and I’m going to listen to the words, but I’m not just going to listen to the words, I’m going to be focusing on the person and soaking in all of their energy. And that becomes a practice. And as you practice it, you get better at it. And when you get better at it, other people look at you and go, I don’t know what it is. But I can talk to you so easily, because I feel like I’m being seen while you are because I’ve practiced seeing people that way. I mean, these are really simple, simple, simple things. But it doesn’t matter whether your moon is afflicted, it doesn’t matter whether your moon is being transmitted by Saturn or by Uranus, it doesn’t matter whether your Moon is exalted in Taurus, or whether it sucks in Capricorn doesn’t matter, because everyone has a moon.

I love how simple and clear this is. And I love how it gives all of us access to all these different archetypal energies, and the ability to practice with them, and go into a very active relationship with them. So that we can embody them in a way that that actually works for us. And so I can also see, you know, I’m in this new podcast studio, that I’ve been waiting for years and years and years, and I finally have it, and I’m so excited. And now I get to decorate it. But it’s, it’s like bringing in the planetary energies that I would love to even transmit to all of you, you know, but but being very mindful of the different ways that these archetypes speak, so to speak without language. And there’s so many different ways we can do that, right. Yeah, so essentially, you’re talking about bringing the heavens into our bodies, so installing them, and doing this very consciously. And invoking them based on what what it is that we feel we need in any given situation. And love what you talked about with balancing all of your Aries, sometimes you need to invoke Venus so that you’re not going to that natural pattern of verbal sparring, that you’re actually taking a moment to pause and say, well, maybe this isn’t the place for that natural wiring to come through, maybe I need to bring in some Venus.

So so this is a really good point, because I know my chart and I’ve practiced with some of these things. And I have to say that there are times that I’m totally unconscious, and I’m not aware of what I’m doing, just like everyone else. But I’ve know that if I’m in that situation bringing in my Venus is not the thing that works because my Venus is in Aries with everything else, and it’ll want to engage in a want to flirt and a want to play it. I mean, it won’t be the Mars assertion aggression, but it’ll still be that in your face kind of know I need to go to my moon, I have a moon in cancer, I need to at that point in time to simply go you know, hands open like this, you know, I don’t have to do it like so you notice it, but if you noticed, I might put my hands on my lap with my hands open, because that’s a lunar thing to receive. And I just do receive and not push back. So we some of this is about learning our own charts and how we naturally work. And I would also say although we talked about Pluto, I mentioned it this met home metaphor works better with the intro Saturnian planets, meaning the sun the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in however, you know, if I’m, you know, going to some music festival, you know, a little bit of Uranium Energy is going to fit in fine. You know, I’m going to, you know, be a little bit you know, weird and expressive and that’s okay. But but it does work more consistently with the Saturnian and inward planets.

Okay, so just in summary, this idea of planets in our pocket is is an idea about how to bring the heavenly realm into the earthly realm, and specifically through our bodies. This idea started with Plato, and then it was brought forward by Marsilio for Chien. No, then it was brought forward again by Thomas Moore, and Carl Jung. And now you and Rick Tarnas. But these these, you know, it has a long lineage, this this idea. There’s the difference you brought in the difference between spirit and soul, and spirit kind of being that thing that that uplifts us and brings us out. And transits transcends us into the heavens, and the soul being something downward and bringing the heavens into the physical. You said, The Spirit is associated with air and with fire, and that it’s Spirit moving upward, and that soul is water and earth. And so soul goes down and it’s dirty, and it’s wet. It’s deep in. And the idea of this whole thing is, is it’s more soulful than it is spiritual. In some in some ways, but but maybe a little bit of both. Yeah. Yeah. Viewed Yes.

Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. Okay.

You said that this is about bringing the archetypes into awareness and into the body for real and experiencing them. You reminded us that we each have every planet available to us, we have all of them. Even if we have many planets in one sign

over and over again. Someone goes, Oh, I have no planet in water. Do you have a moon in your chart? Yet? Yes. But it’s in Capricorn or whatever? It doesn’t matter. It’s the moon, you know, find your witness there.

Okay. Yes, you said, there are 11 other ways we can be. So we’re one you know, maybe something predominantly, but there’s 11 Other ways that we can be and that we can consciously choose? So you brought in examples of of Jupiter, you brought in examples of Venus, and mercury? And this idea of what would you better do? What would Venus do? What would Mercury do and and allow the imagination to and what you know about the archetypes to come together to find ways that you can communicate with the energies without language. So more?

Yes. And Amanda, just one point of clarification, I think you said it really well, that we are the course of least resistance, a planet in the sign. And there’s 11 Other ways? Well, this is what yoga is yoga is about taking postures. It’s about putting ourselves in positions that we don’t normally put ourselves in, by practicing those positions and seeing what it feels like. And so that same idea of doing Asana, or sitting in postures, we can use to see what it would be like to have a Mercury in Scorpio versus a Mercury in Libra.

I love it so much. There’s there’s certain I think I’ve talked about this on the Cosmic Connection. I’m in this songwriters journey. And I had a one on one with one of the coaches yesterday and he said, What’s your relationship to yourself as an artist, and I said, I don’t think of myself as an artist at all. And so we went through this whole process, but now that you’re speaking, it’s like God, I could invoke Venus, and allow Venus to move through me and help me connect with that inner artist as an example.

Sure, Cheryl said I’ve been making up songs lately, for my vegetables growing in the garden to teach people how to grow them and make friends with them share. Cheryl are you’re around here, are you going to be Lilydale by the way, and by the way, Gail, hello, Gayle, who’s also here, Gil is my partner in crime and editor in chief and, and manager of projects. Gail wrote back to Cheryl that is so good. Cheryl, I sing songs to my flowers too. So even even that which people know, when we interact with with non intellectual consciousness, or you know, whether they’re animals or non humans, whether animals or plants, that those vibes are actually communicable God, they were able to communicate them.

Yes, and I love this idea of, of thinking of the things that you don’t associate yourself with, like you don’t think you’re a certain way or you don’t think you have certain gifts and using this idea to just invoke those aspects of yourself that are maybe asleep and that you could you could bring forward if you consciously invoke but again, I love this emphasis on not doing it with words. Yeah, because I think that that a lot of times we do these these intentions and we’re writing things and we’re trying to do with words with our mind.

Yeah, now yeah. And again, speaking the words can be important, but only if they’re speaking words that are already ritual or pre ritual. And here, we get to the idea. And I know, we’ve talked about Saturn returns and planetary returns. And I’m always reminded of the fact that one of the most basic rituals that we humans have, is that our solar return, we state an intention, and then we let it go, how do we do that we make a birthday wish, and then we blow out the candle. And that, of course, blowing out the candle is a significant part of any sort of Practical Magic, that is that nothing can complete itself. Nothing. The Zen teachers teach that the arrow cannot hit the target, unless you let it go. And by the same token, we can spend 20 hours a day going, I wish I had, I wish I had i wish I had I wish I had. And until we stop that, until we let that go completely and think about pink elephants or, you know, or, or, you know, Blue Dolphins or something completely different. Only then can the universe do its magic, we have to be able to let it go. And so and so blowing out the cat lighting a candle When beginning some sort of ritualistic process, and then blowing that candle out, is releasing the arrow into the air so that it can hit its target. But we have this same thing, again, in a practice that we do as children, and we don’t even know what we’re doing it. But that’s what we are doing. It’s the verbal side of the intention.

So good, right. The last thing that you said that I’d love to reiterate, is this idea that we can actually put planets back in our pocket when we need to. So we’re either taking them out, and we’re letting them express or we’re actually putting them in and de emphasizing them based on situations that we’re in. But all of this just sounds like so much fun. And I just encourage all of us to play with it. And

so as we play with it, we begin to then weave patterns, like a musician conducting a symphony, realizing, hey, this Jupiter at the bank is really good. But if I bring in enough Venus just to have the richness there, and at the right moment, I hit a little piece of Mark, we begin to create orchestras, around the playing of the themes. Because nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything happens in harmony or dissonance with other vibrations.

All right, who’s in to play around with this, this is so much fun, Rick, thank you for bringing this topic to all of us. And I know there’s more of this to come in the future, which is very exciting. And just thank you for all the obviously all the time and energy and exploration and curiosity that you’ve done to get to this point where you can share all of these ideas with us. And I can’t wait to hear from all of you as you do it, you know, as you start to invoke these different aspects that are available to you. And let us know like what are the results? How does it go? We finally see in the chat. Anything else you want to say before we wrap up, Rick?

No. There’s always more for us to say I’m interested in hearing what Rick and Becca Tarnas have to say, this week. And so that’s going to be fun. And now and other than that, practice, explore. The planets aren’t just something to aspire up toward. There’s something to actually have lived in your lives. Bring them alive. make them happen all over every day when you see something. Acknowledge it as Oh, that was a Martian thing that just happened. Oh, that was you know, that was very Venusian. Oh, that felt like mercury was here. Well, crazy moment. phone rang phone went dead computer blipped off Uranus, Mercury retrograde. Just acknowledge what’s out there. Because that then helps us express what’s inside as it moves outward.

I don’t know about all of you. But I’ve actually downloaded a few of the books that we’ve talked about as we’ve been live. It’s like, oh, I need that book and that book. And yes, the workshop next week with Rick and Beckett will be in this same realm of how we bring astrology alive in our lives. How do we use it really consciously? How do we bring these archetypes to life? How do we ensure that we’re using astrology in a way that is helpful, and avoiding things that might be harmful. It’s going to be an amazing exploration with Rick and Becca, and I can’t wait to share all that with you. That’s astrology. hub.com/initiation. And if you have not yet, taken Rick’s astrology foundation courses with us, I highly encourage you, if you love his teaching style, if you come to the cosmic connection, and he blows your mind every single week, then you would want to participate in that class. It’s astrology hub.com/foundations, one four astrology hub for the foundation’s one course. And then we have foundations to and we have chart reading extravaganza where Rick is actually doing chart readings live. So you can see how he brings the content to life with a client. And then there’s a chart reading extravaganza level two, you can either buy these courses ala carte, or you can get the whole Levine bundle. That’s astrology hub.com/levine bundle to get all of them at a discounted price. But yeah, that whole, the whole orientation to how Rick does astrology, some of this is woven throughout it. And you’re gonna love it if you haven’t taken that yet.

It was so strange for me to see all those things go up. Because those are courses that I wrote and taught. It’s like, Wow, there’s so many of them. I know we’ve done a lot.

We’ve done a lot not to mention what 75 Plus Cosmic Connection episodes. I mean, yes, you are prolific. And we are so grateful that we get to learn from you. And all these things are available to us. It used to be that you have to travel. To get this kind of information you had to move to be around someone like Rick. And now we get to learn from Rick with technology. And it’s amazing. And Rick, as you were speaking about the in person event and how you do these real experiential things I was thinking about in astrology hub events some day, and how it’d be so much fun for you to lead workshops on this so we could do this live. Yeah, yeah. All right. Awesome. Okay, everybody, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for being a part of our community. Hope to see you on September 21 for the your astrological initiation workshop. And in the meantime, thank you so much for making astrology a part of your life and exploring all these different things that we come together to talk about. So thanks so much for being here, and we will catch you on the next episode. Take care everyone. Bye