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This podcast episode is brought to you by AstrologerConnect, your premier source for quality Astrology readings. Hi there and welcome. This is Amanda, the founder of Astrology Hub, and you’re listening to our week ahead snapshot with world class astrologer, historian and author of the Cosmic Calendar, Christopher Renstrom. This show is designed to give you a quick overview of the week ahead,

enabling you the gift of choice in how you navigate and weave these energies into your daily life. Enjoy. Hello, my name is Christopher Renstrom, and this week I wanted to talk to you about Jupiter entering, or rather, should I say, reentering the Zodiac sign of Aries on December 20th. Now, Jupiter, as you know, entered the Zodiac sign of Aries earlier this year,

and it maybe got to about, I don’t know, maybe three-ish or four-ish degrees before it then turned retrograde and left Aries and reentered the Zodiac side of Pisces. So there was all of this feeling of expectation and anticipation as Jupiter was entering the fiery sign of, of Aries Aries, the Zodiac sign of the spring Equinox. Perhaps this promised new beginnings and fresh adventures,

but it only got to about maybe three or four ish degrees and turned retrograde and left again. So it was kind of a bit of a, you know, false start in a way. But now, now on December 20th, Jupiter will finally be entering the Zodiac sign of Aries with full purpose and determination. Now, I thought long and hard about Jupiter in Aries.

What would Jupiter and Aries really mean? Or what does it say? What does it say to me and, and what does it inspire that I would want to say or share with you? And the thing that immediately came to mind was a hero of mine. He still is a hero of mine. You may know him as having written the book, the Hero With A Thousand Faces.

And his name, for those of you who recognize that title is Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell was a professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York City for almost 40 years. And what he taught at that, at that school, it’s actually a, a college. What he taught at that college was the, basically the history of myth. And those basically were the seeds that were planted for his writing career,

which would go much further than his tenure there at Sarah Lawrence College. The first book that he published that really got him quite a bit of notoriety was a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces. And he published that in the year 1949. He followed up with that book Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1959 with the Masks of God, which was I think maybe a three or four,

four, I think it’s a four volume series, which talks about all the world religions. And when I discovered this in the 1980s, yes, when I discovered this in the 1980s when I was a wee slip of a youth, I remember saving my money and going to East West Books, you know, and as I as and as soon as I could,

purchasing each volume of the masks of God, you know, and taking it back to my apartment and just reading it greedily, you know, for this whole idea of like different mythologies and different mass masks of God and different aspects in which the divine would appear for me in my twenties. This was, this was rich and intoxicating stuff, but, but the hero with a thousand Faces is actually really the book that sets off his,

his whole writing career. And, and he was an extraordinarily prolific writer. And what I wanted to share with you is actually this passage that I remember reading that really seized my imagination. It’s a, it’s a small little passage. It’s from the introduction of Hero with a thousand Faces where Campbell says, Freud Young and their followers have demonstrated irrefutably that the logic,

the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive into modern times in the absence of an effective general mythology. Each of us has his private unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams, the latest incarnation of EDUs, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, Stan, this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.

I loved that. I remember when I first read that line, I just fell in love with it. It, it, it just, it, it just spoke so much to me. You know, the latest incarnation of EDAs or the latest, you know, a version of Beauty and the Beast is now standing on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street waiting for the traffic light to change.

You know, this, this idea that we carry these mids inside all of us, not not knowledge of the mids, we’re not all well-versed in them, and we don’t all know them from front to back or, or, or, or start to end. But we carry within ourselves this, this kind of knowledge, this knowledge we don’t know that we have,

but when we hear the story, we recognize it. It’s what makes a mythic story, which can start out very bizarre, infinitely recognizable and familiar, okay? And, and, and it’s because as Campbell points out in hero with a thousand Faces, you know, it’s because we are carrying these mythologies around inside of us. Now, hero with a Thousand Faces was famous for introducing,

well, what Joseph Campbell wanted to introduce, which was the mono myth, okay? And the mono myth comes from this idea that he had this belief that he had that all mythologies from all different cultures and all different backgrounds despite their different characters, their various locations, you know, even the beliefs of those particular cultures, all mythologies have this, have this basic myth,

this basic motif that, that the hero goes through. It doesn’t matter if it’s from Mesoamerica, it doesn’t matter if it’s from Africa, it doesn’t matter if it’s from Northern Europe or Greece. They all follow this sort of like idea of, of the mono myth myth. I, I think nowadays it’s probably called a meta narrative. And basically it was sort of,

well, I think the best example to sort of share with you or to illustrate the idea of, of the hero’s journey, which is basically what Joseph Campbell was famous for, or, or, or, or that’s his first claim to fame, is the, is the narration of the hero’s journey. This monomyth, a really good example of it is Star Wars.

In fact, the hero with a Thousand faces inspires and influences George Lucas, who, who writes Star Wars hero with a thousand faces. You’ll, you’ll recognize immediately in The Lion King and all these different sorts of popular myth and popular celebration of legends and folklore. But in Star Wars, just to sort of briefly outline it, you have, you know, what Campbell starts with in the heroes journey,

the call to adventure. And, and that’s where, you know, we meet the hero or the protagonist of the film. In this case it’s Luke Skywalker who’s living a very dull and dreary life on some sort of desert planet. And, and it’s not doomed Desert Planet, but it’s not really, you know, that like attractive either. And all of a sudden out of the sky drop these two droids,

you know, and these are the supernatural friends, you know, or the animal, or the animal totem figures or something like that. They’re, they’re kind of supernatural mythic figures. These, these droids, I mean, he knows of droids, they’re around his farm, but you know, these are like polished and, and, and, and, and refined droids with great information and Ilan.

And so what he learns from them, you know, is that there’s a princess named Princess Leia who’s in desperate trouble, and she’s trying to contact OB one Kenobi, and she says, please help me. You’re my only friend. You’re my only salvation. And Luke actually sort of knows Obiwan Kenobi, but not as this great, you know, savior,

but rather this kind of desert. Hermit a sort of slightly creepy guy. He’s kind of benign, but there’s also sort of like weird quality to him that nobody goes near. And, and he lives out in the desert. So he goes and, and, and seeks Obiwan Kenobi. And, and from there begins their adventure where they jet off into space and,

and end up, you know, in the belly of the whale, which is the death star. And in the Death Star he has met Hanzel or, and, and they’re fighting the soldiers. And Obiwan Kenobi confronts Darth Vader, who’s the dark side of, of, you know, who’s this tyrannical villainist, Dr. Doom, like figure. And,

and he gives his life, you know, so that Han Solo and Luke and Leia and the droids can escape, and they do, and they come back and they go in and out, and it’s all sorts of Buck Rogers adventures. But it basically hits on different motifs, like the idea of the tutelage that, that Luke, you know, learns to,

is in, initiated at the realm of the supernatural by Yoda. And supernatural in this regard is the force, you know, which is this invisible force that you can call upon and, and use to manipulate objects in reality or even reality itself. And, and he confronts Darth Vader in this duel that he is really not ready to, to, to do.

And, and he loses it. He not only loses the duel, he loses a hand, which is also a, a, a thing in, in, in hero’s journey, like there’s some sacrifice or wound or something like that, that one has suffered. And he discovers that Darth Vader is his father. And so all of his heroic ideals of going off and,

and fighting the empire and bringing good to everyone is shattered because he realizes that his father is basically the most villainous figure that there is in, in the solar system, if not the universe. And of course, that is a fall from Grace. That’s a great disillusionment. He, he has failed, he has failed to fight to, to best Darth Vader,

and he has failed in his journey. And so this is the darkest, you know, point. And it’s at this point, of course, that the hero comes back from this, you know, they get the gumption, they have a realization, someone speaks to them, there’s another call for help, and they come back from it and they end up,

you know, redeeming themselves and also redeeming the entire adventure. All of this was introduced before Star Wars, by Joseph Campbell in his book, the Hero with a Thousand Faces. So it’s pretty heady stuff, you know, and, and, and, and you can recognize that there’s a young, a lot of Yung mythology involved in here, Jungian archetypes and Meade Eli is also thrown into hero with a thousand faces and,

and all, all sorts of things that deal with the motifs and the telling and the narrative of, of, of mythology. And I remember reading it, and I remember loving it. And I remember also sort of, you know, making excuses in the way that you sort of like have to, I don’t know if it’s making excuses or, or,

or extending the benefit of the doubt in the way that a reader does when you’re not part of the regular person in society. Okay? Like, like it was far too, Campbell was far too male. There wasn’t enough of a, a female influence other than maybe kind of like a passive influence in his books and literature, you know, sort of thing.

I mean, I didn’t really relate to like, goddess temptations or, or all, you know, it just didn’t really speak to me. But, you know, you sort of read it with a, a generous eye okay. Sort of thing. And it really, really spoke to me. And also, you know, as an astrologer who’s starting out in the 1980s when I was starting out in Astrology,

the big, the big thing was Yian Astrology. So of course, Joseph Campbell’s love of Yung, you know, brought, you know, that brought me to Joseph Campbell. And, and the Yian Astrologers were talking about hero’s journey and these motifs and redemption and loss and all these sorts of things. And so this all filled my mind as I gathered my books and built my library of Astrology and,

and all these sorts of things. But you know, as, as you go on with this, you, you not, not a, you collect these things and you revel in these things, and it’s really, really a lovely thing. Actually, I do have to return to my butt, but as I was reading all of these volumes, hungrily,

there was still something that wasn’t really clicking with me as an astrologer. Something that always left a bit of a question or a doubt in my mind. And I’m going to circle back and get to that a little bit later. So Joseph Campbell introduces this monomyth, it’s, it’s this one size fits all mythic framework, you know, that you can pour all of your cultures myth mythologies into and get beginning,

middle, and end, and ta-da, like, who doesn’t love a monomyth? Right? Okay. And so, BA Campbell’s message, but returning to the parts of Campbell that I really did enjoy, and this, this passage still speaks to me years later, I, I really remembered this resonating with me. And when I ba went back to reread it,

it resonates with me still. And again, it’s from the hero with a thousand faces. Campbell says, there are of course differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of mankind. But this is a book about the similarities. This is a book about the similarities. And once these are understood, the differences will be found to be much less great than is popularly and politically supposed.

My hope is that a comparative elucidation may contribute to the perhaps not quite desperate cause of those forces that are working in the present world for unification, not in the name of some ecclesiastical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual understanding, as we are told in the Vitas. Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names, and I really,

really love that. So what he was talking about is like, we could sort of see the mythologies as being different, but there is a sort of unity to them. And perhaps if we could find that, that unity, we can, we can create a, a, a feeling of unity, but not homogenization. I mean, he’s very, very careful to say,

not homogenization, you know, but, but a unity. And, and, and those are two very, very different idea. It’s again, getting back to the idea of the big tent philosophy, which Jupiter represents and symbolizes in horoscope. Jupiter is the big tent philosophy. All different views and points of views and opinions and beliefs are welcome here. You all have a place at the table.

This is Jupiter in its finest. And of course, because I didn’t mention this before, so I’ll mention it now again, part of the reason I chose Joseph Campbell for today’s talk is because Joseph Campbell has Jupiter in Aries, okay? Joseph Campbell was born with Telium in Aries. I mean, what else do you expect from someone who writes a book called, there Are With a Thousand Faces.

He has the Sun in Aries next to an exact conjunction between Mercury and Jupiter, and then there’s Mars and Aries, okay? A little, a little ways away from all of that. So, so, so he’s, you, you can tell that he’s drawn very much to the spiritual, that, that his archetype is going to be the archetype of the hero.

That there is a wanting to know the world, to understand the world, the world that’s seen, the world that is unseen. And also there’s Mars and Aries. I mean, he’s going to advocate this, not only is going to pioneer and introduce this, I mean, this is Aries, right? Pioneering, introducing, bringing forth. Okay, but he’s also going to advocate and fight for it.

Okay? So, so these are qualities that, that show up. What I love as, just as a quick side note, what I love with his Mercury and Jupiter exactly, conjunct in Aries, you know, there, there is a bit of inflating things or globalizing things, things we, that we would expect from, from a Mercury Jupiter conjunction.

But what I love about it also is that the Mercury Jupiter conjunction in Aries speaks to his being prolific. I mean, his body of work is enormous, and that is very much a Jupiter conjunct Mercury in Aries. I mean, this is someone that once he sets himself about the task, he’s going to produce a lot. Okay? So, so it’s a great testament to having a stellman where the stallion begins in the Sixth House,

okay? That, that, you know, great work and perseverance is going to produce this body of work. And that’s indeed what Joseph Campbell does. Now, the climax of Joseph Campbell’s career, the climax of Joseph Campbell’s career was the Power of myth. And the Power of Myth was produced in 1988. Power of Myth was extraordinary. It was a series of interviews at Skywalker Ranch,

by the way, okay? George Lucas, who had been so inspired by Joseph Campbell returns the favor here at, at, at, for Campbell, who was born in 1904. So in 1988, he’s, he’s up there, okay? So he returns the favor of housing or, or, or, or, or being the stage staging these remarkable interviews between Bill Moyers,

who very much at that time was, was, was very much the master interviewer, you know, someone who always had, although he was always curious and, and he begins in journalism and news, and he’s very much always a newsman. There was no denying that Bill Moyers had a very strong spiritual quest side to him. You know, I think he does a show afterwards called Genesis,

which is a remarkable series of interviews with different religious scholars. But, but here before he does this show called Power of Myth with Joseph Campbell, and I think it’s broken down to like maybe 12 episodes or something like that. And where, where they really go through Campbell’s work and his theory and what he’s setting up. And there’s lots of illustrations, and it’s just,

if you ever get a chance to watch it, it’s really worth it. It’s really delightful and very, very enriching to watch these two magnificent minds discuss these ideas. But it’s not an infomercial. I mean, Moyers challenges Campbell on a number of different points. And so it’s very stimulating. It’s, it’s, it’s intellectually stimulating, of course, but it’s,

but I, I always found it spiritually stimulating on a, on a very, very deep and profound level. Anyway, power of myth ends up becoming a cash cow for pbs. And, and, and they even produce a book Power of Myth, which was edited by none other than Jacqueline Onassis, but Campbell had died between the making of the series and the debut of this series.

So Campbell had died, b you know, right after the interviews with Bill Moyers, but before it was actually aired. So he never saw it, you know, he, he, he never saw it, which is kind, it is sad, you know, that, that the man who who, you know, had such a vision of, of comparative mythology never really saw his work or in its complete form.

And that, and never knew that it would propel him to fame, a fame that was bigger than what he had enjoyed before. I mean, he’d gone from a book that, you know, a curious astrologer starting beginning astrologer in his twenties, you know, was saving up money for it, east West books on Fifth Avenue to this, you know,

across the nation, I think really across the world, power of Myth, which really got him an extraordinary audience. And so, and so, this was, this was really, really remarkable. And, and so, you know, I mean like, how can you get better? You know? I mean, he is, he, he, he,

he dies, but, but he leaves this extraordinary legacy behind him. And as what happens in things like this, they never really quite end that glowingly at, at the time. You know, when I was a kid, I would, one of the magazines or newspapers that I would purchase, and I still do to this day is the New York Review of books.

That’s not the New York Times book review. It is the New York Review of books. And it’s, it’s wonderful. And, and, and it’s great, and everyone should always purchase the New York Review of books. But anyway, I would read back then, you know, New York Review of books from cover to cover, you know, or, or it’s actually a big newspaper,

so from front page to back page. But in any case, I remember that, I think it was like a year or two-ish after this, there was an article that was published by Brendan Gill who was an editor at the New Yorker magazine, and it was an article in which he was critiquing Joseph Campbell’s message and Joseph Campbell’s life, okay? And,

and you know, he was a friend of Campbell’s. They were the me members of the same club, and I think it’s called The Century Club or something like that in New York. And, you know, it’s the sort of thing where fellow, where fellows Don Tweedy little jackets and drink at the bar and maybe have a little too much to drink and get all opinionated and full of,

you know, debate and things like this. So, so Brendan Gill, you know, was, you know, a literary editor figure in New York City at that time. Joseph Campo was a published author. He’s enjoying this, you know, and, and so he’s teaching at Sarah Lawrence, I think Gil went to Sarah Lawrence, a new p. Anyway, so they,

they, they were very familiar. They were friends with each other for a number of years, decades. And so everyone was really shocked when there was this really critical if not scathing article that Brendan Gill wrote about Joseph Campbell after the premiere of his series, power of Meth. So, and, and in this Brendan Gill not only critiques Campbell’s messaging and the messenger,

but he also reveals that Joseph Campbell was an arch conservative, I, I believe he says, just to the right of William f Pucky Jr. Which is pretty conservative, that he was a racist and that he was an anti-Semite, okay? And so this brought an immediate Paul, you know, I mean, like, you know, he’s the darling of P b s,

it’s power of myth. We’re getting in touch with our archetypes. Like, what’s, what’s this? You know, Joseph Campbell racist, Joseph Campbell, follower of William F. Buckley Jr. Joseph Campbell, anti-Semite, you know, I mean, this is like, this is tarnishing, this is tar and feathering in, in New York literary society. These are the worst things you can,

you can, you can level at someone. And so of course, many people come to his defense and, and, and truth just how revisiting it, Brendon Guild sounds a little jealous, like more than just a little jealous. I mean, it’s hard to sort of cloak or paper over the acidic quality, and it makes you kind of ask with friends like that,

who needs enemies. But then again, Joseph Campbell’s ruling Planet Mars was right on the Seventh House cusp, the angle of the Seventh House cusp. And that, as you know, is not only partner, but it’s also open enemies. And it’s very clear that Brendan Gill was friends with Campbell for a very long time and was now turning around and becoming an open enemy demonstration of what it’s like to have Mars on the Seventh House,

especially if it’s your planetary ruler, if you have a Scorpio or Aries there. But anyway, that, that aside, I remember at the time being very disillusioned, being very, like, you know, these are the worst things that you can level at someone. And, and part of me even reacting with like, well, they’re kind of, you know,

like, you know, I, I wasn’t certain. And, and so I was young, you know, I was critical, but not necessarily a critical mind. You know, you’re, you’re in your twenties, what do you want? So anyway, so, but I remember being very disenchanted. The scales fell from my eyes, and it was very hard to read Joseph Campbell.

And so Joseph Campbell went to a different shelf in my library, the sort of like out of the way shelf in the library, but I never got rid of the books, and I still have them, and I still treasure them very much to this day. But that is the effect that, that it had had on me. And I know that that is an effect that it had on several other people,

but mostly it sort of rallied together the people defending Joseph Campbell, who, you know, said he wasn’t like these things or whatever. But what you couldn’t really deny is that in the letters that followed, there were many letters written by people who’d gone to Sarah Lawrence, who knew Joseph Campbell and who were saying yes, indeed. He was like this, in some cases he was even worse.

Okay? And so they, and so what they would ask, and this is, this is why I’m telling this, what they would ask is, some people who had worked with, with him at Sarah Lawrence, or even worked with him on production of Power of Myth, would, would ask themselves, how could someone, how could someone as sage and wise as Joseph Campbell,

how could someone who had really studied in great depth all these different cultures and these mythologies, you know, when it came to modern day culture and life and living, you know, how could he have problems with African Americans attending Sarah Lawrence, which he did, you know, I mean, how could he threaten students who joined political marches against the government with,

with flunking them out, and actually going ahead and flunking them out? How could he do this? I mean, how could someone who was so enlightened also have this other side to him? And that’s really what I want you to think about. That’s why I’m making a point of sharing this. What do we do with, with a figure like this in,

in modern day, we cancel them, right? We, we cancel them. We, we stop reading their work, and we, we have nothing to do with it. And here are the foibles. And, and all of these foibles just distract. They take away from anything that this person did, and we throw them out. We, we canceled them.

And that got me really, really thinking. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this since returning to reading him again after such a long period of time. And one of the thoughts that I thought was that in Greek mythology, a hero isn’t always good. In fact, in Greek mythology, a hero is often as harmful as they are beneficial. We know Hercules and his 12 laborers and the way that he proves himself,

you know, but how many of us remember that he kills his first wife and all of his children that he has by, okay, in a fit of insanity, he kills them all, right? Or we think of Jason, and, no, not Jason Theseus. Okay, Jason Theseus. Okay? We think of Theseus Theseus who goes off to fight the Minar and enters into the labyrinth,

the maze, and Riy gives him a thread so that he can mark where he’s come, and that he can find his way out. Because if you weren’t killed by the minnaar, you would lose yourself in the maze and probably die of starvation. So anyway, he succeeds, he kills the minnaar reemerges from the ma maze, and actually ends years and years of human sacrifice.

Seven youths and seven maidens were sacrificed every year by Athens two, an Noah to the, to this labyrinth. And, and, and it was like a, a tie thing or something like that. Anyway, he ends all of that. He liberates them, you know? And so he, you know, for, you know, he swears love Toni,

she loves him, you know, they sail off, you know, they stop at noxious, which is some island. He gets up the following morning with his men, gets on to the ship and sails away and leaves ri aney there on the rocks and knock noxious. And, and that’s actually a really great and fabulous opera by Straus. But anyway,

he leaves her there, he leaves her there, she had helped him. So, so, so heroes do as much harm as they do good. I mean, that’s actually a benign example. Many others go and kill people openly and, and feel like it’s okay that they can do that, because they’re heroes. They’re better than everyone else, okay?

And, and, and us regular folk just have to sort of put up with it. So, heroes in Greek mythology weren’t always good. And often when they passed or died, they were then worshiped. There were hero cults, okay? They were worshiped, not quite as a God, but an almost God. I think that’s why they were kind of like demigods,

kind of like God-like, kind of like not, you know? And they were worshiped in that way. And, and, and they were worshiped in that way because they were invoked as protectors of the cities that they had founded, okay? And, and, and so, and so, they protected cities that they had founded. And, and, and that’s,

you know, what the cult of the hero was all about. Nowadays, we call it a cult of personality. So the pathologization of this, of the hero, okay? Like everyone sort of forgets about Hercules killing his children and remembers the 12 labors, okay? And pathologization of the hero sends that hero rocketing into the immortal realm of legend. And if you think of like,

well, what’s myth or legend have to do with me? Or, you know, is that really even that relevant these days? I want you to think of George Washington, okay? I want you to think of Abraham Lincoln. I want you to think of a great figure as recent as Martin Luther King Jr. How much over time the facts of their lives kind of like follow away,

and the attributes that really lend themselves to a more heroic or a legendary figure. These are the things that come forward, you know, and sort of like bathe the person in an almost divine like light. Okay? So, so this is something that we do naturally with our heroes. We might go through a period where we’re disenchanted with them, where,

where we’re disillusioned with them, but, but we will still in our imagination or need for a hero, find something that we can adjust and rework and show off in a kinder and more flattering light. Getting back to the problem that I had with Hero of a thousand Faces and the idea of the mono myth, okay? I did not forget, okay,

getting back to that is that it became increasingly more difficult. As I read the Yin Astrologers and, and I read Joseph Campbell and archetypes, it became increasingly more difficult to buy into this mono myth. This idea that all myths are, are basically share this framework. I wanted to, it’s, it was very appealing. I, I, I could talk about archetypes and tell the story in different stages and what you discover of this and all these sorts of things.

I mean, this is really the way that I had learned to practice Astrology. But what debunked that for me, ironically, was Astrology. The more I practiced Astrology, the more I realized there is no such thing as a monomyth. You know, there’s no, there’s no one narrative that tells the story of, of a person’s life. You know,

a horoscope, a horoscope is as unique as the person who owns it, okay? Or a horoscope is as unique as the person’s life who is living it all, right? And, and when we look at this, we see that there is no monomyth at all, right? I mean, you’re, you’re gonna have birth and you’re gonna have a life,

and you’re gonna have an end of your life. But, you know, that’s, that’s as monomyth as you get. And that’s pretty much life. As, as human beings, we’re drawn to patterns. We wanna see the patterns and things, you know, patterns and things lead to scientific discovery patterns and things, repeating patterns and things. Le give us a sense of consistency in life here in this world.

So, so it leads to scientific discovery, it leads to philosophical, you know, speculation, you know, discovering these patterns, realizing that we’re not living in a completely chaotic world or completely chaotic universe. But what Astrology has taught me is that even though we have cycles, you know, I mean, the moon’s gonna go around all 12 signs in one month.

A solar return is when the Sun returns to the place where it was on your birthday, Jupiter returns to its place where it was in your horoscope. Every 12 years, a Saturn returns every 28 to 30, and I think your earnest is something like 84 or something like that. But anyway, you know, this idea of returns of things being cyclical,

it lends itself to the idea of a pattern. But what I’ve come to realize as a practicing astrologer is that the contexts change. I mean, the pat, the, the cycles might remain the same, but one person’s Jupiter return isn’t gonna be the same as someone else’s Jupiter return. You know, the contexts are different, the horoscopes are different. So there is no mono myth.

You know, there, there’s nothing that sort of like combines these ideas. I mean, I think there are motifs, you know, that appear in folklore, that they appear in legends, that they appear in mids. There are motifs, you know, certainly stories have motifs, but there’s no one set thing that’s gonna say everyone has to live or understand or come to a re realization like this.

Moreover, these repeat or take on D different, or actually, they, they might repeat, but they also, there are so many different variations on the theme, even in one’s own life. And that to me, that to me is enriching, okay? That to me, is like one of the most enriching and liberating things about Astrology, is that,

you know, not only is it unique to the person who’s living it, but there are so many variations on the themes of these planetary aspects or returns or whatever have you, this, this, this choreography that they dance out in the heavens, this script that they write out in the heavens. There are so many variations on this. It’s impossible to say that this is the way it is,

that there’s one set thing. And that’s what’s so wonderful about Astrology, is that it resists becoming a doctrine. It resists becoming a set system of, of, of thought, a set system of interpretation. It resists becoming a dogma. Astrology has resisted this for as many centuries as it’s been on the planet. So here, here for Astrology, okay?

But let’s get back to the idea of the hero. This, this Jupiter and Aries. Let’s return to the question. Does someone’s misdeeds counsel out what they’ve done? You know? And what I want to share with you is that phrase that he made famous in the power of myth. And that phrase was, follow your bliss. I remember everyone like responding and reacting to follow your bliss.

It was like, follow your bliss. Oh, that sounds so marvelous. That sounds so wonderful. I wonder what my bliss is. I guess I’ll have to like, learn about these mythologies to know. Okay? So, so this idea was following your bliss. That, that there was something that you could follow that was going to give your life resonance and meaning.

And Joseph Campbell writes in one of his books about Follow your Bliss. He says, if you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you. And the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living wherever you are. If you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment that life within you all the time.

You know, there, there, there’s such beautiful words. And at first, you know, I remember thinking, oh, well, that’s the secret to life. All you have to do is follow your bliss, do the things that you wanna do, you know, and, and, and your bliss is lives inside of you. Like a refreshment.

You know, something that’s going to restore you whenever you’re knocked down following your bliss. Sounds like a really good thing to do. But that’s not really what Joseph Campbell meant. The phrase, follow your bliss. So what does follow your bliss really mean to this? I turn to the producer of, of the Power of Myth, and in a letter that she wrote back to Brendan Gill,

who had criticized Joseph Campbell on the pages of the New York Review of books. And one of the things that Gill had really criticized was this phrase, follow Your Bliss. He, he said that this phrase, follow your bliss, is about self-gratification. It’s about doing the things that you enjoy. You know, that there’s nothing particularly profound or, or, or sacred about it.

It’s just, you know, it, it’s playing into Reagan’s materialism was actually the criticism that he leveled at it in his article. So, Joseph Campbell’s producer writes back in this New York Review, a book, she writes, quote, after years of working with this material, I would suggest that this interpretation, i e Gil’s interpretation that follow your bliss is just about self-gratification.

I would suggest that this interpretation is the opposite of what Campbell meant. Campbell says, and here she’s quoting from the TV series, we are so busy doing things of outer value that we no longer know what we intend. And he says this in many different ways. What Joe meant and continues to mean in this period of infant mortality that so irks Mr.

Gill, is that the impositions of our culture have caused us to lose touch with our inner selves and our own inner sense of being that directs us toward those things that are most meaningful in our lives. And then she concludes with this further, he said, follow your bliss. No matter what the cost, though society may revile you, though you may live as an outcast and in poverty,

and in poverty. This is the philosophy he followed in his own life, in pursuing his intellectual passion, mythology. It is the message he gave to his students, young and old. And it is the reason he drew their admiration and love. So follow your bliss is follow who you are. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s answering that call.

It’s answering that call that begins the hero’s journey. You know, it’s, it, it begins as a call to adventure, but it’s actually really answering the call to a higher purpose, to going and discovering your higher purpose, which of course is what Jupiter and Aries is all about. How it’s framed here is also the idea that it’s an individual journey,

okay? That depends on your courage and your determination, your individual courage, your individual determination, Jupiter and Aries. You can, you can hear it here. And that following year, bliss isn’t like, you know, oh, I’m gonna be true to myself. And you know, who cares what anyone else thinks. That’s not what Campbell’s saying. This is not what she’s saying by underlining what he says.

She reminds everyone that following your bliss may lead you to society. Reviling. You, you may live as an outcast. You may live in poverty, you know, following your bliss. You know, this thing that, as Joseph Campbell says, restores you, it replenishes you. You know, it’s blissful because it keeps showing up in you, revitalizing you,

and moving you forward in your life. Sometimes you know where you’re going in your life, and sometimes you don’t. And in those times when you don’t, you can tell that, that you’re on the right track still. If you are following that, that, that bliss heroes, and this is how I want to conclude for today. Heroes are flawed.

And the point isn’t to look past those flaws. And the point isn’t to try to reconcile them with the person we know, or the artist we admire, or the myth teller. We, we, we follow. Okay? So the point isn’t to look past the flaws to, to paper over the cracks. And the point isn’t to try to reconcile them.

The point, and this is the point that Astrology makes to all of us. The point is to tell the whole story. Hmm. The point is to tell the whole story and to reflect upon the entire life. Because this is the g greatest gift that any hero, this is the greatest gift that any human being can give to all of us. Jupiter Jupiter will be in the Zodiac sign of Aries until May 17th, 2023.

Hi there. I’m Amy Escobar, a producer of the Horoscope Highlight Show with Christopher Renstrom. Thanks for tuning in to the Astrology Hub Podcast network. If you love the show, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and share it. And if you don’t know how to do that, here’s how you can leave a review in Apple Podcasts on iPhone.

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