What the Next Big Astrological Shifts Mean for Us (Jennifer Freed, PhD)
Listen now (62 mins) | "Jupiter's been in Gemini for this last year, and that is exclusively about talking and ideas and the media storm and all of the bits. Jupiter and Cancer radically shifts..."
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Many of you will already be familiar with Jennifer Freed. She’s a psychological astrologer, a social and emotional education trainer, an author, and the cofounder of the nonprofit AHA! She’s one of the wisest and most honest women I know. Really, she’s a national treasure.
Today, Jen is talking about what’s happening, astrologically speaking, that could help us make sense of this moment in time. And she also gives us a preview of what’s coming, and what opportunities the next astrological shifts might bring us. As Jen will explain in a minute, there are some really big changes on the horizon—what she calls “a colossal changing of the gods and goddesses,” and “a full transformation of planets and their signs” coming this summer.
If you have a hard time following astrology like me—don’t be intimidated , you can stick with us on this one. We don’t get too in the weeds. And we also talk about much more. Like…how we can move toward what we most care about with real conviction. Where to find togetherness in periods of transition. What distinguishes good power. Why saying “no” is stronger when it’s joyful. And, oh, lots more.
MORE FROM JENNIFER FREED:
Previously on Pulling the Thread: “A Map to Your Soul”
Jennifer Freed’s Substack
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Jennifer Freed’s Website
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
ELISE:
Oh, what fresh hell is this?
JENNIFER:
Well, I'm very excited to talk to you today because we are going through a massive, colossal changing of the gods and goddesses, and whenever that enormous shift occurs, the first phase of it is chaos. We are witnessing the end of an incredible period of history and the end of an idea, and none of us knows what's going to happen next. However, the only thing we know for sure is it cannot be decided by a few white men.
ELISE:
Yeah, it feels like it will be. And some
JENNIFER:
Wild
ELISE:
Women, okay,
JENNIFER:
Don't go there. Because the changing of the archetype, the living symbols, is suggesting that we're orienting in this shift toward the feminine, toward the feeling, toward the empathetic. Now, of course, there's always the shadow which can be infantile, clingy, emotional, whiny behavior. We've seen plenty of that, but I want to break it down for you because I know you love this stuff and you're into the archetypal world. So basically coming this summer, we will have a full transformation of planets in their signs. So we've gone from 18 years of Pluto and Capricorn. We've now got Pluto and Aquarius. We went from years of Neptune and Pisces. Neptune is now an Aries. Then we're going to have Saturn go from Pisces into Aries, and we're going to have Uranus after years being in Taurus, go into Gemini. And then the really big signature for this year is Jupiter going into cancer. So what does this mean to the lay person or anybody listening? It means that we are reorienting our entire perspective of life, ourselves and others. And Jupiter, the planet of blessings abundant and auspicious beginnings is going into the mother sign of cancer, cancer ruled by the moon. It is about the divine feminine. So don't count us out, Elise, if ever this is the time to say we have been denigrated, we have been dismissed, we have been repressed, we have been repurposed as handmaidens. No, not going to happen on our watch.
ELISE:
Yeah, I mean, I feel like for anyone who had any questions or wanted to give benefit of the doubt to this idea that we aren't being slowly disenfranchised, there are things besides what's happening to our reproductive freedom and ability to have dominion over our own bodies and lives look no further, of course, in the save act, which I don't think will pass the Senate, but still it's a gesture of essentially taking away our votes in the ballot box. It's absurd and it will hurt red states even more women in red states even more. But yeah, on one hand I hear absolutely what you're saying, Jen, and this idea that women could be silenced or snuffed out or completely sidelined feels honestly quite laughable. I feel like so many of us we're boxers training at high altitude, don't mess with us. I think we all can recognize who the more competent party and with increasing time, who the more educated part of our society is, et cetera. Women are incredible. I kind of feel like I'm holding a tantruming child sometimes where it's like, okay, okay, okay. And yet it's also obviously feels quite perilous and very scary, and it's a time of deep uncertainty, that's for sure.
JENNIFER:
Yes, it's deep uncertainty. And people always ask me as an astrologer, what will happen? When's it going to stop? And I say, when will you stop it? What will you make happen? And I want to read a couple of quotes that I looked up for this show because this particular Neptune in Aries hasn't happened since the Civil War. So I want to read these two quotes because they're really relevant right now. Frederick Douglass said, power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. We have to be that demand. On the other hand, a confederate congressman said at the same time, we the south contend that slavery is right and that this is a confederate republic of sovereign states. We are fighting ideals. We are fighting for the freedom of the free world. And we cannot forget that under this changing of the gods and goddesses, the moon is central, the female is central. And Maya Angelou said, love recognizes no barriers. It jumps, hurdles, leaps, fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
And one of the biggest metaphors of this time with Saturn and Neptune coming together is the dissolving of the walls. We have never lived in a time where the walls have been built higher and more purposefully exclusionary. We have to believe that this is the calling of all of us that care about love, freedom, dignity. We have to start melting the walls. And it starts with, as Loretta Ross says, imperfect allies. You and I, Elise don't agree on everything, but I'm going to back you up a thousand percent. And I always do because it's not about agreeing. It's about is there core values we adhere to that we're fighting for, and yes, we are, and they are the divine, feminine, caring, compassion, ethics, integrity. This is what we're fighting for. They're not negotiable,
ELISE:
Right? Yes, nurturance relationship, holding each other in the highest and best regard, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, et cetera. All the things that we would want someone else to approach us with as well. And the image that has been coming to me through words and through what I read and visually is, as you said, this disillusion the disorder that comes from the end of an old structure and that old structure feels safe and it's familiar, and I wrote about this in my newsletter last week. Chris was talking about as the end of a snail shell, and it's been our home and it's been our harbor, and yet it is way too small. It is, as you said, too exclusionary. It doesn't meet the complexities of the day, and we need a new snail shell and we are in the perilous moment where we feel vulnerable and exposed as our old snail shell is destroyed and taken away from us with violence and cruelty and threat. It's a scary transitional period, and I'm trying to hold my faith that we are protected and loved and that there is a new snails show that will be so much roomier and so much more loving and relieving and constructed for a new time, right?
JENNIFER:
Yes. And I love your image of the shell because your psychic and cancer is the crab, and the metaphor is the brittle shell covering up the extraordinary, tender, vulnerable center. This is who we are. We've all had our brittle shell. It's being broken to smithereens the call. The invitation is if we let the shell break and connect instead of defend, we will make this transformation into an incredible new paradigm. But if we keep holding our shells in place and using them as armor, we won't connect and we'll keep dividing, and it's our choice. We're all in a sense prone to defensiveness and righteousness and certainty. Certainty is not going to get us there. It's the mystery. It's the unknown. It's the Can I count on you? Can I stand with you? Can I lean on you? That's going to get us through this time, and it's doing the walk, not so much of the talk. That's the other thing that I really want to talk about. Jupiter's been in Gemini for this last year, and that is exclusively about talking and ideas and the media storm and all of the bits, Jupiter and cancer radically shifts that into, can I feel you when with me, when we're sharing, does it feel authentic and tender and vulnerable, or does it feel like a mask? We'll be able to discern that much better. The sound bites are not going to be as compulsory.
ELISE:
So well said. And it goes to something I was discussing with a friend last night where I feel like there's a fracturing happening, and it's been happening for a long time, but within media, and this is half formed, but between the cosplay space Walk that just happened, even the Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively shenanigans, all of it, to me, it feels like as a plebeian watching the fabrication of culture or opinion or power, and it feels more and more, I'm like, oh, we're watching a play. We're watching theater, and we have been manipulated by what we're seeing. And now the stage apparatus is so visible, and I don't know, it just feels somehow like some veil has been lifted increasingly, and just looking at the comments, and obviously people are getting roasted, but it's like, oh, I don't want to be manipulated like this anymore. I don't like this. And I don't know if that's a function also of people sort of being shaken awake and recognizing, oh, I cannot be complacent here. I need to be careful about who I'm giving my attention to in this economy of attention. And that this, I hope is some sort of corner that we're turning collectively where we're like, oh, this matters. This is the most important currency I have. It's more important than money. It is energy, and I have to be more protective of it.
JENNIFER:
Beautifully stated, and again, in line with the change of the gods and goddesses. Neptune's been in Pisces, which is both mysticism and arts and music and the positive, but we've been in a period for years of numbing out, dumbing, out, being distracted, being numb, and all the psychedelics, all the marijuana, all the everything has been part of that. I'm saying the low side. We're now Neptune in areas which is about waking up to the body and physicality and choice and agency. It's like coming out of a dream of a century and going, holy shit, where have I been? So you're right, going to be more discerning. And what I want to invite people to do is instead of roasting the person that was part of the rocket ship roast the entire operation of this kind of irresponsible circus that keeps pulling our attention off of what matters into ridiculous moneymaking theater, it's fun. It's fine. Don't roast the people, just see through it. Oh, this is how they keep capturing our attention. So we don't look at what really matters to us, our children, school, food, weather, climate, this is what matters people, how dare we take all our consumer attention and put it to things that it's going to be high sugar at the best.
ELISE:
I think many people would say, maybe this has been clear, but I feel like that's the period that we're living in. I just went to Canada last week for a few days and just feeling however many, not even that many miles right away from our circus to use your words, but the attention vortex, the black hole that's created through the chaos of drying energy, attention, it's like I can't feed it anymore. And I feel we're all at this point of what's the line between focusing on all the beautiful things in my life and my children and the work I want to do and being outraged, concerned and flipped out. This is where I feel like they keep us crucified so that it's hard to reassemble your own energy and attention because it's such a cacophony. And then you feel, of course, like I'm a bad citizen if I'm not continually paying attention to the circus.
JENNIFER:
Well, we have to distinguish the fact that we are being completely sold on fear or craving, fear and craving. What are you longing for? What are you craving? You're not enough till you get it. Oh, be terrified because we're living in a time that anything bad could happen at any moment, and we're going to tell you about it on a 24 hour news cycle. So we're being bombarded, and yet we have the power. We have to keep remembering this, the power, and this is the Aries energy coming in. We have the power. It's our body. It's our fingers that touch and tap. We can connect. People are infinitely happier when they are in music concerts, listening together, infinitely happier when they are dancing together, infinitely happier when they're writing in collaboration with your best friend. It's contact. That's the real thing that people need and want, but we're sold something entirely different. Disassociation and longing.
ELISE:
Yeah, that's so right. You mentioned to chaos, and then you read me quotes and it reminded me of this section, and I want to read this to you. This is from you read Hagitude by Sharon Blackie?
JENNIFER:
Not yet. I will.
ELISE:
Okay. I need to get her on the podcast. But this book is primarily about menopause, but it's menopause is this crucible for birthing like the birthing of the next self for women and the reemergence of the crone and the feminine and all of the things that you were mentioning at the beginning. And she writes, :this period of disarray I live through and the run up to those choices is typical of the chaos that so often confronts women during menopause at this time of our life one way or another. And whether we choose eventually to go with its flow or insists on resisting its tide, chaos is going to come knocking at our door as someone with an unreasonable need for control. Over my own life, I've always feared chaos, but chaos it seems was precisely what I needed in order to break free insight into the strong medicine that chaos brings comes from the world's origins.
It is derived from the Greek chaos referring to the void, which was said to exist before the cosmos was created. Chaos then contains the seeds of new life, the seething potential out of which an entirely new universe might be born. As Nietzche said, ‘one must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.’ Chaos is the beauty of uncertainty. It unbinds us so that it can create us anew.” So I think that's so beautiful and terrifying, but she talks about the elements of herself going back into a mixing bowl so that she could reconstitute herself on the other side. And that's what's happening, right? Yes. And no one can do it like women.
JENNIFER:
No, we understand it biologically because we bleed and then we stop bleeding. We are this experiment of extraordinary redness and then entire new period of our life in which we stop bleeding, but we become everything we can because we're no longer constrained by expectations. But I want to get back to the chaos part. That's the period we're in. And one thing I want to say, astrologically, et cetera, is there's no going back. Do not revere the past, do not have nostalgia about what we've lost. The reason it's all being thrown up in the air is because it was good enough, but it wasn't great. And if we're going to make it as humankind, Pluto and Aquarius, we actually have to have human kindness. We have to create a new paradigm that includes everyone and everything gets its due, and we can't do that by going back and revering what was because it wasn't doing that either.
ELISE:
I know we all have so much. Well, nostalgia, it's etymology is homesickness, right? So there's some deep core longing. I mean, here we go, chaos of the womb. There's some longing for wholeness that I think that we all revere, and then we place it somehow in some mystical past, which I don't think was much better, right? Even though it feels so wild, the world is getting kinder, we are moving in the right direction, maybe not at the trajectory that I think you and I would like to see. Doesn't feel like we've made choices that maybe are in our collective highest good, but maybe we're rock bottoming. We're making the fall more precipitous or more extreme in order to wake up. I don't know. You tell us.
JENNIFER:
Well, what I'm going to say is again, these are potentials, not predictable outcomes. So the potentials of the shifting of the gods and goddesses is for us to take charge of our future. That's the main theme I want to say. Take charge of your future. Stop looking at a pundit or a podcaster to tell you who you are or what to do. Do the moral inventory. What is it you're capable of? What can you contribute? This is a time of agency and autonomy, and through that boldness that we each can bring to the conversation or to the actions, we will galvanize other people. We cannot keep waiting to see what other people think or do anymore. We can't be at the effect of the movement. We have to each be the movement. So what are you moving toward? The biggest question right now with Saturn and Neptune going into areas is what can you move toward with real conviction? What is it you're committed to? Regardless of what other people think, that's what's on board right now. And there's a lot of weirdos and freaks, including me. I'm one of the outliers that have to stand for what we believe even in the fire, because the fire is saying it's now one minute to midnight. What will you do
ELISE:
Practically? How do you translate that for people that calling that vocation?
JENNIFER:
I'll tell you because a teacher once did this process with us and it was really revealing. Think about the one cause that if you died in the next year, you would want to say you had a huge impact for, is it saving the ocean? Is it children's healthcare? You just pick the cause and you act as if every single day you are going to be a reason that that caused blossoms and grows, and you stick to it no matter what people throw at you, no matter what kind of adversity you face, you say, this is my lane. I'm sticking to it. At the same time, look over there at Elise with her cause and say you go. In other words, it's not join my cause or you're not supportive. You do your cause. I do my cause. But if there is every single person committing to whatever that thing is in their life that they would die for, it's a beautiful thing. That's where the noble truth comes. It is only in the passivity, in the contempt, in the criticizing the people on the playing field that we give away all our power. We've got to be the player. Whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. It's the energy of moving towards something instead of watching, waiting.
ELISE:
Yeah, I know you like to do people's charts. When we think about, I'm sort of waiting for the vision and I recognize we can all participate in that, but I'm waiting for whoever is going to be stepping forward and maybe it's too soon to tell to say, I hold a vision and that you all are going to participate in. And is it too soon to say,
JENNIFER:
Well, Pluto and is very clear on this. There will be no one emergent leader that time is over. The demagogues are over. It's going to be a kind of a radiant light in different aspects in different sectors and giving those people your attention and admiration, but it will not be one consolidating individual. And that's really a big mistake people are making. Who's going to be the next? No, you're the next. I'm the next. I want to look at your chart for a second. I always love to do that for me, Elise, you're one of those guiding lights and I think no, you seriously are. And for many of us, it's people like you that keep fighting back the cynicism and the passivity with, in your case, incredible intellect and sophistication and spirituality and love. If there were a thousand people as committed as you right now putting out actual quality media, this would change the entire conversation. So everybody just take their step up. And for the listeners of Elise, support her, make her platform bigger and wider because you're one of the people that stays the course. You do not deviate from criticism. You do not step back out of fear. I know you're scared, but you don't step back. That's the kind of leadership we need. And it's many, many, many people, not the one.
ELISE:
Thank you. And I love this. This is one of my core messages from my book, and this is where I think people can get really distorted often by psychedelics when it's like, I'm special, I'm special. And it's like, yes, you're special. And we're all special and completely unique ways. Everyone I think is uniquely gifted. We're all here to serve in some highly specific way that may or may not be evident to people. Some people serve, I guess in more visible ways, I would say not even grander, but somehow that's been lost, I think, in this culture of celebrity. But it's already starting to happen. I was laughing. We had a small little book celebration last night for the book that I did with Phil Stutz and Harrison Ford came and Kyle McLaughlin. I came home and I was like, oh, I met Harrison Ford to my kids who are eight and 11.
And they were like, who's that? And then I was like, oh, Star Wars dah, dah. And they're like, oh yeah. And I'm like, God, well, one, I'm getting old, but two, we're living at a time when my kids idolize. They have these pocket celebrities who are so incredibly famous to 8-year-old boys who fill in the blank, right? I mean, there's the Mr. Beasts and the whatnot too who are mega famous, who even I know about, but we are certainly living in a time of a million micro niche celebrities. We don't have the Harrison Ford level superstar anymore. It doesn't exist. It's fading with our generation, my generation, right? It's not a thing.
JENNIFER:
Well, you're reminding me to say this about Pluto and Aquarius and Uranus going into Gemini make ordinary great again, make ordinary great again. What drug did we take that made it we're insignificant? Unless we are a gladiator in an arena of a million people, that is perversion.
ELISE:
It is so weird.
JENNIFER:
It's so weird. It's so distorted and it denigrates the beauty and the awe of the everyday life.
ELISE:
Yes.
JENNIFER:
Oh my God. If people could remember that to my granddaughter said, please come smell this rose. It's the most beautiful rose in the garden. And it just bloomed. And I was busy and I'm like, yeah, yeah. And then I went and smelled the rose and it blew my mind because that 1 cent was so beautiful in an ordinary garden, an ordinary rose. We're all of that. And we've been gaslit to believe that our lives don't mean that much unless we get a million likes.
ELISE:
I spend most of my time in the corner of my bedroom, as you know. And then I spend a lot of time talking to cultural luminaries and therapists and fascinating people. I love my life, but I have a pretty small social world at this point, and it's not that rarefied. I don't want people to think that it is. And yet I went to Canada as mentioned to ski with Chelsea Handler, and then it was the most joyful three days I have had in a long time, in part because we just laughed the whole time. But it was her whole cadre of friends, Canadian friends and Whistler. It's high school teacher, a therapist, maniacal marathoner, the chief of the fire department, a guy who owns self storage units, a physio. I had so much fun, Jen, with this group of women and a couple of men, and it's not that I don't have many, many people who aren't normal, but being in LA, it's such a thing. And oh, it was so fun. I was like, this is life. This is so joyful. I love this. And their kids. I don't know. Anyway, tangent.
JENNIFER:
Well, I do want to say that there's two points you're making that are going to be, I think, emblematic of the next phase. One IRL is way sexier than digital. Let's get real people and B, in real life with real people. Secondly, what's the most important thing besides sleep? It's not orgasms, it's belly laughs with friends. When we can laugh in a rip roaring belly wave with friends or strangers, that is like a cosmic yes to life. It's not personal, it's not possessive. It's this free expression of joy that ripples in a very sensual body way and it's free and it doesn't have to be monetized.
ELISE:
God, no. It's the best. I have that experience a couple of times a year when I go home to Montana, et cetera, and it's so fun and it makes me think I need to just get the hell out of here and I don't know, but I can cultivate it here too.
JENNIFER:
Well, that's part of what I want to call you for is we have to take wherever we are and make that the place that becomes the sacred laughing zone, the in real time and in real life experiences. I make a point, I live here in Montecito, which could be the most image conscious place on the earth. I don't relate. I wear my sweats to the Miramar, whatever. I make a point to talk to everybody. Everybody. And it's in those ordinary conversations. That's where my juice is. It's in the actual collective in the meeting of those moments where you see somebody and they see you and there's a little spark. We've got to get back to that spark of seeing each other mask off.
ELISE:
I agree. And maybe this is what getting at in terms of the theater of the spectacle of the last several years, this last several decades that's been really been mounting and now I feel like it's truly fracturing. It's Oz. We're all being taken behind the curtain and exposed to Oz, to Frank Oz. I felt this way early on in my career. There were two experiences that happened to me that I'm so grateful for because I feel like they were incredibly grounding. And first I went to work in magazines and growing up in Missoula, Montana, completely outside of culture and in the woods truly. But it was Interview magazine and Vogue and this whole projection of a certain image, and it was so compelling to me. And when I got a job at magazines and then you go and you actually go to the sausage factory and you're behind the scenes at the shoots and you're like, oh, I understand this.
I see the whole spectacle, the whole fabrication, the whole creation of image and then telling people what to want and desire. I saw the whole mechanism, which was going to Oz as well. And then the other thing that was really important for me, I think, is that I worked at a Conde Nast magazine and the publicists were up, my hoo-ha trying to entice me to feature their brands and products. And it's very glamorizing and you get sent a lot of stuff, but I didn't like it in part, I think now that I understand myself from an Enneagram perspective as a six, I'm very careful because once I'm in with someone, once I love someone, I'll crucify myself for that person out of loyalty. When you are in, I can't quit you, which is painful for me and has been painful at times throughout my life.
But anyway, at Conde Nast, I had that experience, which I never trusted and I didn't like. And then I went to Timeout New York, which was a far less glamorous institution, and everyone lost my email address shockingly, I was like, oh, I get it. I see. I understand transactional relationships and it didn't hurt my feelings, but I feel like I needed that. I got that medicine so early that it's really stayed with me for my whole life. It's weariness, but it's also sort of understanding particularly for women, that we bring all this covert longing and desire into conversations and we never make it overt. We never make the ask directly. And we're sort of twisting people, manipulating people to try to really understand what we want and meet that need instead of saying it. And so now, I don't even know how I got on this tangent, but it feels like two superpowers I got really early that I also want the world to get one, the creation of image and projection. And I think we're all getting a lesson in that. And then also, I'm not going to wait and manipulate and hope that someone meets my needs now. I need to be direct. I want the feminine and all of us to become more overt, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
JENNIFER:
Again, I think we're all going to be disabused of the notion that an image is going to give us the real calories. It won't.
We need the fuel. The fuel is connection. The fuel is authenticity. The fuel is the truth. Not fake news or media that's hyping us to something that doesn't actually matter. And in terms of direct requests and transactions, this is something that you've taught me, and I want to name this you said a year ago at a workshop, women don't ask each other for things. We expect things of each other and get really hurt and disappointed when the person doesn't mind read. And it's been a powerful healing in my life to get much more direct and to empower other women. When I say, Elise, I want this from you, then it gives you permission to want something from me. And that's how we're going to build the next movement. I want you to be on your game, Elise, and keep going and build, build, build. Because I want you to support me to do the same.
ELISE:
With pleasure. Thank you.
JENNIFER:
Yes. But I think this is what we need to say to each other. I'm not just supporting you. I want you and I do, but as you rise, and this is the other new paradigm, I rise. You love me. It's not you rise. I go down. You rise because you've got integrity. I'm going to rise with you. We're committed to each other.
ELISE:
Yeah. Yes. It's also cutting through all the perception of scarcity that so many women have in part because there has been scarcity. But we create more if we help each other. All boats rise in that scenario. And I also want to say too, and I mean we could do an entire episode about wanting and this work that court and I have been doing too, that's part of the workbook coming later this summer. But it's saying what you want, which requires knowing what you want, which I find to be impossible, something never considered. And so it comes out in these covert ways for a lot of women. So one, it's owning it, naming it, committing to it, expressing it clearly. And then it's also the temerity, the strength to handle. No. And that's very difficult. I still have trouble saying no. And then I get mad at the person who asks me for the thing. I'm like, how dare you ask me for something and put me in this uncomfortable position of having to say no. And so that's one of the things that I'm working on. And Courtney has given me scripts and I'm on a no diet and practicing. And part of that is also getting comfortable with hearing no from other people, but feeling like I need to ask overtly and then accept the no.
JENNIFER:
Yes. And I want to say that for me, I've learned this, yes, is joyful to say, and no is joyful to say. And my nose used to come with not so much joy out of fear of people feeling hurt or not loved. I put a lot on the no. But if you think about where no really comes from in your body, it's the same place as a belly laugh, no is as strong as a laugh when it's joyful. So what you're pointing to is as women as strong, we can say yes. If the no is equal to that, we're going to be on this incredible pivoting place of joy for the yeses and the nos and the possibilities and the letting goes. And it's going to be way easier than trying to manipulate other people so that they won't ask us or we won't tell them. Just say it.
ELISE:
Yes. Or manipulating people to get our needs met or hoping, oh, I hope that this person finds it in themselves to give me what I need. But I wouldn't Dane ask. And I think this is important. I was like, why am I going on this direction? But I want to bring us back to how you opened this, which is
JENNIFER:
The changing of the guards. By this summer, we will have Saturn and Neptune in Aries, which is all about autonomy. And I want to really stress, it's about being in your body with the yeses in the nos. It's not a mental thing. Aries is physical. It's fire, it's fire in the belly. Saturn, Neptune, and air. Uranus moves from Taurus, the shakeup of the financial world to Gemini, which is the innovation in conversation. The innovation in communication, and the radical new wiring of the brain. And then the biggest thing for this coming year, Jupiter moving out of Gemini, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Talkie, talkie, talkie, talkie to cancer. Mother moon, Jupiter in the divine feminine saying to the whole world, drop in people. The mind is not going to be the answer, the feeling hearted, compassion, tender, merciful mother home, that home longing that you spoke of earlier. We all want to feel at home. The only way to do that is to welcome everyone home. We have to welcome everyone home.
ELISE:
So as this shift into the feminine happens, what does that mean? It seems like what happens astrologically, it's happening. So we can look at someone like Trump and say, you're Dick, and he's some sort of puppet. I think of him as an unconscious spiritual martyr. But yeah,
JENNIFER:
So when Jupiter, it's coming in July, so it's not just yet, but you can feel it starting to come. Saturn and Neptune are by June in Aries, Jupiter and cancer will feel like everybody is a lot more attuned to children's and mothers and families. And so what does that ask of us that we start tending to our communities? They're our homes. They matter that we don't just stay in our ivory towers or our isolated silos, that we bring the heart of the world into our communities, into our interactions. That home becomes a metaphor for everywhere we are and inviting everyone in. Now the other thing you said is when we look at Trump, I think we will stop looking at those white men. I think we're going to start looking at women and wondering what's on their plate, what are they feeding us? What are we feeding each other? It's going to be a lot about nourishment. Where do I nurture? Where do I feel nurtured? It's a whole new way because the mind has been very, very turned and whipped up in this time of Jupiter and Gemini and Jupiter. And cancer is like dropping in, dropping in. It's like being out in the world in a windstorm, walking through the door and there's a fire and a plate of beautiful food, and you want to share it with somebody you love.
ELISE:
How long, when you take a long view in astrology? And if we really are at the end of this era, and we're in this period of disorder before reorder, and I love reading people like Richard, we on this, I don't know how long these cycles are. Is this a hundred years? A thousand Years?
JENNIFER:
No. There's micro cycles and larger cycles. We are in. The Jupiter into cancer cycle is one year. It's one year from July. Neptune in Aries is 16 years. The Saturn is two and a half years. The Pluto is 18 years. But I'm going to say this to you with Saturn and Neptune, Neptune in Aries both together for the next two and a half years with Jupiter, I'm going to tell you that the transitional period is two and a half to three years to seed the next whole epic.
ELISE:
And so we can expect to watch our snail, shell continue to crumble and feeling vulnerable and exposed on that forest floor until we slowly make our way to safety.
JENNIFER:
And also with the cracked shell metaphor, it's like, well, the shells may be broken, but the mush can find each other and become this colossal kind of movement of fluid open communication systems. So you want to think the shell can be rebuilt, but the inside intact, it's intact. And if we join it, it's this glob of goodness. And I want to read something that Dacher Keltner said that really matters during this particular period. Real power. Real power means enhancing the greater good. And your feelings of power will direct you to the exact way you are best equipped to do this. Real power is not the ones that create and then destroy kingdoms. I want to call that fake power. It never lasts. It's always a power play, but it comes from deep inadequacy and insecurity. The kind of power that would destroy things in order to be the ultimate gladiator is not real power. It's a thirst for power that's driving from insecurity and inadequacy. Real power leaves a legacy of greatness in the social and political world. It's like, oh, that person left us with something we can admire forever.
ELISE:
Power is one of those concepts. It's such a dirty word to so many of us. And I have this conversation with one of my friends, Sarah all the time, who's a high powered executive of what is good power and who has it, who's cultivating it, how do we all participate in that in some way? How do we support that in the world? And to me, it feels like an enigma, I think in part because I'm like, I don't want anything to do with that, right? As it's currently being expressed in the world. But to turn our backs on it is also, and to sort of espouse, powerlessness is not okay, right?
JENNIFER:
You're so funny. This is your chart. You have a kind of power aversion in your chart because you're such a service. I do. Yeah. You're a service-oriented person. I'm a power beast. I'm all about having power. I'd much rather have the power than some jerk that's going to rip apart our society. So to me, the definition of good power, and by the way I love that term, is it's sustainable, it's generative and it's healing. And you better believe I'm ambitious in that way. I am super into having that power to help generate a whole nation of people that have been marginalized, having access to education. Oh my God, am I into that power?
ELISE:
And here's an insight as I was thinking about this, oh duh. The whole premise of on our best behavior, the core thesis is women are conditioned for unquote goodness. And I talk about goodness, not as it is internal, baked in core to who we are, but as this externally mediated, good girl, you comply, you obey, you participate in this patriarchal system of power, right? So that's this idea of unquote goodness. And then on the flip side, I say men are conditioned for power. And again, I think of it more of as theatrical power, caricature, whatever power is, it's not weak. It's not feminine. It's this assertive power. Again, goodness, power. And so the antidote is this good power, the completion of the cycle, the masculine and the feminine together. This idea of wholeness is not the shadow versions of those two qualities, but the versions that are in light.
JENNIFER:
All right, I couldn't agree, and I actually think we should stop saying men are conditioned to power. I think power is a beautiful thing. They're conditioned to aggression and corruption. And I'm going to tell you, the men I know that I love that have suffered from this indoctrination are really crippled by those,
ELISE:
Oh, patriarchy is more wounding to men than women. I think
JENNIFER:
Aggression and corruption, real power is unafraid and is serving courage and kindness, longevity, sustainability, compassion. That's real power. Not this fake version that's like, oh, I'm the gladiator wrestler and I'm going to beat you up. So what?
ELISE:
It's not at a UFC fight.
JENNIFER:
I don't think so.
ELISE:
Is there anything astrologically else that we're missing? Any bright spots?
JENNIFER:
Well, for me, a bright spot is a return to the body that is a big, bright spot. I loved psychedelic as much as anyone, but I think it took most of the people I know outside of themselves into kind of an expanded universal perspective. But it didn't actually lead to embodiment. And I think the Saturn, Neptune and Aries is a huge call back into embodied wisdom and doing the chop wood carry water, be in it, be in it. And that's very bright to me because I feel so much better when I'm with people in person and can touch them and see them and look at them and sense them and smell them. This is going to be a bright spot of people are going to crave that return to the body. I like that. Be awake in the body.
ELISE:
Yeah. One of the big pieces of work that I'm also working on right now is bridging the spiritual and the material. And we're here to live, right? We're here having the strange existence that it's at times quite beautiful and at times quite terrifying. But we're supposed to be in our bodies, and I'm someone who has of course likes to escape my body, but this is it, right?
JENNIFER:
Yeah. It's called the return to the body. It's return to the sensuality. It's as our friend Emily Morse is obsessed with, what is your pleasure? How do you create pleasure? We're going to suffer no matter what. I'm not going to ever minimize the suffering, the deep suffering that we are all going through in some of us way worse than others. But why even be in this existence if we don't sacrifice? Pleasure?
ELISE:
Sounds like a ever. You and Emily Morse just Enneagram Sevening it
JENNIFER:
Up. You bet. Now I have two things I want to request from your listeners because I want to be transactional. One is out of my pleasure and my despair, I wrote this romance novel called Beyond Aquarius, and now I know it's good. It has many extraordinary reviews on Goodreads. I know it's not your genre least, but other people that you work with like it
ELISE:
an Astro Romance novel. I love it.
JENNIFER:
But I realize now I kind of minimized it myself. What it's really about, because I've had men read it too, is an authentic journey of love and what real love looks like and how you have to battle for it. And it's not easy and it doesn't come magically. It's a real journey. So I want people to read the book Beyond Aquarius. The other thing is I'm part of a company called textceleste.com that is a daily astrological tarot reading and a consultant and the women that have created it are extraordinary, but it's at a place now where I feel so proud to tell your listeners every single day, it's an invitation for your own badass power and your own knowing. It's not like you are this, you are that. It's questions and coaching on how to bring forth your gifts.
ELISE:
I'll put the links in the show notes.
JENNIFER:
Thank you, Elise. Alright buddy. Thank
ELISE:
You.
JENNIFER:
I just want to end on this note of if we all could have the quality of podcasting that you provide as our daily feed, it would uplift the vibration. I really mean that. And so I think people want to use their ears and their eyes to start really deciding what makes me a better person to engage, what makes me a better person to engage and engage those things and those things only. So thank you.
ELISE:
Thank you. I appreciate it. Jen Freed is one of the wise women in my life. I have known her for man an awful long time. She was the first person to ever give me an astrological reading. I had never done it, which is probably shocking to some people. I was in my thirties, I was pretty newly at Goop actually. And I drove up to Santa Barbara to see her at the suggestion of my friend Lauren Roxburgh, who had known Jen for decades. And yeah, she really blew my mind. Not only what's interesting, there's this certain, and I love this, and I wish there were more people like this. So Jen is a psychologist and she's an astrologist, and she uses the two to triangulate into a reading. So what you're getting is therapy with an understanding of your chart and what you're designed to do and what's possible for you. She presents it in a really beautiful and loving way, but then she uses it as a way to come in and really talk to you about what's going on in your life in a way that a lot of therapists are held back, if that makes sense. So it's kind of a brilliant maneuver because she can say, you have this point in your chart and this is what it would suggest. And so let's talk about how this is showing up in your life. And it's a very active form of coaching really.
And she's an Enneagram Seven, and so she is one of those people who is always good for a laugh and lightness and joy and pleasure as she mentioned, which is really good medicine for me because I love to laugh if you listen to this show. I love to giggle, but sometimes I get very serious and it's one of the reasons I've been bringing people like Jen on with more frequency, or Ann Emerson ,or my friend Satya is coming on. Sometimes I just want to talk to friends and maybe have a little laugh and get into it and dive into what's happening in this moment for all of us individually and collectively, but remind people that there's air at the surface too and that we don't need to spend all of our time dying in the depths. And it's okay to laugh. It's not only, okay, it is essential medicine to find joy, joy, joy, joy, joy.
As Carissa would say, service through joy, not servitude through suffering. There is a remarkable difference. We have been in a period of servitude through suffering, and it is time for service through joy. So think about what Jen Freed said, finding those gifts, finding that service, throwing yourself into something that matters to you and do it and do it with joy. That is what we need. It is essential medicine in what can sometimes feel like very heavy times. If you like today's episode, there are several ways to support the show. I produce it myself, so this helps me to continue to make it. First, please rate and review the show on the platform where you listen and consider sharing this episode with a friend. That's how it grows. It is so helpful. Second, please support my sponsors who make this show possible. And if you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can email me: admin [a] eliseloehnen.com.
Finally, some hope!
So happy @Dr. Jennifer Freed is back on my favorite podcast!!