Welcome to the Discipline of Freedom, a space for visionary creatives, founders, and leaders who know what got them here, won't get them there. This is where we explore the edge between commerce and creativity, strategy and soul, the material and the mystical, to go beyond self-imposed limitations and into integrated leadership. Because courage isn't just bold action. It's aligned. Evolution. Let's begin. I am your host, Eilish. Perfect. So here we go. I'm sitting here with Ridge in the Butter Factory in Co Bargo. And for me, this is the last week that I'm going to be here. And you know, it's a bittersweet situation'cause I have lived in this loft, which I've loved, and in this community where I found some gorgeous people and. John has been one of those tremendous gifts. It's when I've been getting more intensely into using astrology in my work. And the story of how I met John was one day he came to the but factory to buy some windows. And that morning I had been thinking I must contact this Irish astrology that I used to work with. And, then as I walked out to get some water or something, Rowan said, oh, come and have a cup of tea. And so we started chatting and then discovered that jams an astro, which I took from a, aside from the universe, that I was supposed to have a reading from him john Reeds in a most beautiful way. He works with archetypes, he works with, the diamond approach and with Enneagrams and constellation. So it's, it's a really wonderful way of kind of like living into and really feeling the astrology. And I have been gifted with what's become this beautiful friendship, um, during my time here. And I'm going to miss John terribly. So I really wanted to record this podcast to introduce all of you to John and how he works with astrology. John is, initially he was, he was born in New Zealand, grew up in New Zealand, is an artist, a photographer, an academic, an astrologer. And just more than anything, he's just this beautiful spirit. So welcome John. Thank you for being here and being over to the conversation. Thank you for the great and try and we all have the background narrative, I guess. And, um, yeah, ology goes back a long way for me. Right back it was, we'll have a story. Mine was a Saturn return around 28. Uh, and, uh, my whole life changed. I left New Zealand. I came to Australia. My marriage ended. I had a breakdown for six months and I went to astrologer and she said, okay, you'll come out of this in six months time and start a new life in Australia. And and I thought, wow. Um, I thought I'd never come out of it and I did. Uh, according to Cian Transits, uh. The Saturn return, the first Saturn return at 27 28 is a massive hit. If you are sensitive to it, it does change one's life. It's the end of youth and the beginning of maturity, young adult maturity. So that was a big one. And I fell in love with astrology by how could you tell that? And, then I saw it as a, um, as a way of profiling myself and to get to know myself. So I'm hinged on this notion of, uh, that we are here to know who we are and to explore our potentials and to work through our resistances, our personality defense systems, and to get clearer and to evolve into our, uh, potential. And that's what the astrology chart is. It's a blueprint that unfolds over our lifetime and it's dynamic and it's unrelenting. That's my take on it. Yeah. And we both agree on that. I describe it as your fate is this blueprint your birth chart, and then it's like, choose your adventure. How are you going to live into that blueprint? How are you going to work with those strengths and weaknesses and those kind of, you know, nice little passes that gives you with, you know, my Jupiter 29 degrees and Aquarius and how it challenges you with Saturn. It'll challenge you with your Mars and it'll challenge you in many other ways with those transits. And it's never ending. It's this beautiful unfolding story. So, so John, the first question I always ask is, what was valued when you were growing up? Um, what was valued was growing up for me was growing up in New Zealand. And it was the wild West coast, ocean of New Zealand. It was the East Coast, which was very calm, but the west coast was the wild, wild oceans. And as a very young kid, I grew up, just outside of, Wellington, the capital, and a place called Ana Bay, which is a little yachting kind of village. I grew up there and that was my very early memories of the love for the ocean, walking along this wild, you know, sea shore, past the Maori paths and, and right along and it was magical and it was very much me and nature. Uh, so that was a big one. And, and the, I had like a lot of people with kind of what I call they, you know, troublesome. Childhood dynamic. It was, it didn't quite work for me and I wanted to escape it. It was, it was straight after the war. My father came back from the war. Um, a lot of poverty anyway. A lot of us kids around that one had a similar experience. It was, it was, yeah, it was tough and it was tough for me. It was a tough childhood upbringing and so I was looking for alternatives, but even though I didn't know it when I was young, and the ocean and the expanse and the freedom of the ocean itself was, was like, it was simple, but it was experiential for me. It represented freedom from my home environment. So yeah, it was the ocean, basically what I loved. Which is amazing for somebody who has their ascendant in cancer, which is, as we've spoken about the force of the wall of water and, your triple water. Yeah, which means your sun and your moon and your ascendant are in water. So this deep primal connection with feeling. Yeah. The, the emotional, the feeling body. It was always, my whole childhood was really a challenge to handle the intensity of my feelings and emotions and the reactions of sensitivity, vulnerability, love, uh, anger, yeah, freedom, abuse, you know, or it was kind of, it wasn't special. It was like a lot of us kids in the fifties growing up in New Zealand after the war had a similar kind of experience. Really. It wasn't easy, it started to get easy in the sixties, but um, in the fifties, growing up in New Zealand, straight after the war was challenging for collectively challenging for young people growing up. And, and I think that. That generation, I think that we are the first generation for, to understand or have any dialogue around the impact of our parenting on us. And I think that the parenting in those days was inherited from many, many other generations. And so for a sensitive child, it was tougher than for, say, somebody who was, you know, had a lot of earth in them or somebody who kind of was more linear or logical. But with having this kind of real emotional drive through your chart. You felt it more deeply. Um, and so when you, you said you, you looked at the ocean for escape and you looked at the ocean in terms of okay, you could imagine beyond yourself. And so where did those imaginings take you to when you had the agency or you had the choice to choose something for yourself? I, I think I was very unconscious right through until, you know, late twenties sat in return. I, I was just intuiting a way through with my feeling nature, it was a gift and a burden to have so much of the three lights, you know, in, um, in water signs. So there was a deep feeling nature, and I was unaware of that, except I was aware of my sensitivity, my sense of, uh, needing to isolate myself, to feel safe to, you know, dive into the water as a way of, in a way cleansing my heart. My emotional body. I didn't know that. But these were just automatic, uh, subjective, young kid, uh, way of dealing, dealing with life, really. I think that was, and I was very sick when I was young. I, I had asthma, most of my youth, so I didn't have that boisterous, um, physical, you know, plane until my, into my teens when I went to secondary school. But when I was young, I couldn't, I was asthmatic. I couldn't breathe much. I didn't walk around much. I didn't even go to school that much. And, and so I had developed a very internalized life, a life of the imagination, and it threw me from the outside into my inner inner world really. So the notion of the inner world and, and imagination became very strong, uh, organically through my childhood. It was my escape. It was my haven, and it was creativity. In a very raw, innocent way. It was, it was, the imagination was, could imagine any, and that's, that was the beginning of creativity for me. And is that what led you, did you go immediately into art school or were you Uh, no, I was dyslexic when I was very young, so, uh, I wasn't very good at school. I could, I could read, that's inspiring for any, yeah. Kids who are dys dyslexic here because you became an academic. Um, yeah, well, yeah, it was a wound basically. I thought I was done, basically. And my mother tried her best to teach me to write. Um, didn't work out for her'cause she would get frustrated. So I developed a, a blockage around it and at 14 and a half I was, you know, my energy came back after having a very kind of unwell childhood. Uh, and then 14 I became rebellious. 14 and a half. I was expelled from secondary school and then until 21, a mature age, I went back to uni. But between 14 and a half and 21, I worked at the Gear meat works, Coca-Cola factory. I did all the, meaning, you know, just everyday working jobs. Uh, and that was such a wake up call. And, and I always had this ongoing mantra, there's gotta be more to life than this. I had that with my childhood. I had that when I left school very early and went into the workforce. There's gotta be more to life. So it created a curiosity and an inquiry in me. And a fire. Um, yeah, as much as I have, uh, have my three lights in water and the feeling emotional, archetypes, I also have the others in fire. So, you know, I can be very steamy, so I had a lot of fiery energy, to go for it basically, and to, you know, try and find out what, who I am really, it was that know thyself became, uh, um, and, and I didn't even have the notion of know thyself until my late twenties. I was just trying to do what everybody else is living on, conditioned responses, be getting married, thinking it was for the rest of my life. Um, doing, becoming an academic, you know, becoming a professional, all of that stuff you know, conventional life really. Um, and that shattered at my Saturn return around 27, 28. But there was a point when you were, in the physical world, you were doing these menial jobs and doing these jobs which other people would've accepted as that was the normal path. Yeah. And the first, the fifth and the ninth house, and the poor satra say this is your purpose, which means that, you know, it's the emotional, the emotional driver through your life. You're always going to be feeling your way and intuiting your way through. Yeah. But how you make your money, how you create the structure, and what you'll be known for, for you is in the fire. Yeah. You know, you've got great squares in your chart, which means that there's plenty of dynamism as they say. What are the puzzles to be solved? And there's also this grand trying that occurs between your second, your sixth and your 10th house. I'm using, um, stein houses here. Yeah. So how you make your money is by you shining. You've got Leo as in that second house. Yeah. You know, and you can see that this great combination for the water, which is the imaginal and the feeling, the emotion, the intuitive to connect it with that fire. Yeah. Got you. Out of that situation. It got you from small town New Zealand to big city Sydney and into, is that when you came to, when you went into art school? Um, no, I went into art school. The fire was there. Um, initially my experience was not very fire. It was very watery through my, uh, childhood up until, you know, my teens. Uh, and then, I had an auntie who was brought across, she was my father's brother's wife, and he died. And my father brought my auntie to Australia and she had done six years in Milan of, drawing the body. And, and back in those days, they would dissect the body. It was old school, it was Renee songs. And, and I, I would draw, I was always. Drawing and trying to make things and I heard her say, uh, overheard her say to my father, this boy should be an artist. And it was like a straw 14 I heard, and I clung to it. So after leaving school, I went to night school, for a long time. And then I, doing life drawing, uh, that was really good. And then I All through your teens? Uh, uh, from 15 onwards. Yeah. Yeah. Um, catch the train into Wellington and do life drawing. Then I went to design school for a couple of years and, I was not a good designer, but I discovered printmaking man called John Drawbridge. So my second year at design school, I thought I, I got permission say if, you know, if you let me do printmaking for the second year, I'll leave quietly. So, so I did printmaking and I became a, an established printmaker in New Zealand, very young, and I would show at the Wellington Academy. And so I started to sell prints and I started to become an artist actually. And that was enough of a reputation for when I hit 21 to, uh, go to Auckland University to Elam and do four years there as a, I didn't have degrees back then, but it was a graduate diploma in visual arts. So, uh, I did that and then I was becoming established as an artist. Then I was exhibiting when I was at art school. I was exhibiting in Australia as well as New Zealand. So I'd established myself. Then I had a sell out show in Australia and 70, so ambitious, 74. Yeah, there was it was all that far. There was a drive. Yeah, there. And so it kept on driving me. So, uh, and then I came to Australia and I thought, wow, this is, you know, I'm being recognized in Australia much more than New Zealand. And I went through a great time in New Zealand. I went through Elam in the early seventies, and it was the beginning of, performance art, installation art, conceptual art. Uh, I just thought it was like art jumped off the pedestal and then started to deal with spaces. And I thought, this is, this blew my mind of what art can be. And that happened when I was at design school, when I first saw a, who was it? Um, it was, it was a target painting I think of, there was American Jasper Johns, when I first saw Jasper Johns, uh, what was it? Jasper Johns flag. And I had no idea how that could be. It was 1959 image, how that could be art. It just blew my mind that art could be anything and everything, and that was such a liberation. So it was a great time to be an artist in the early seventies in Auckland. It was very experimental. There wasn't money in it. So we're all being extremely experimental with a big show. And I had a big show at the Auckland City Art Gallery in 1975, but we all, a number of us did know installation works, and that really set me going, you know, that gave me credentials. That's so exciting because my belief is that you can't create a vision that you can't. See, and you know, the vision has to come first and the vision is often sparked by something outside of yourself. Yeah. You know, I remember seeing, um, Rothko for the first time, and you, you kind of go how have I not seen Rothko before? And I fell in love with Rothko and every time I go to New York, I go and see the Rothkos. Yeah. And it seems so simple and yet there's such complexity and there's such depth and such beauty in the work, you know? And it's so interesting'cause you know, I grew up in a very, um, my parents were creative, but it was very much on that survival. You got educated for it to get a job. You didn't get educated for to live a creative life. You certainly didn't get educated to become an artist. And I think that was very much in. Those times. And I've really come to believe that to choose to be an artist is the most audacious decision you can make. Yeah. You know, people talk about courage, but it is the extraordinarily courageous decision in a world that is economically driven. Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely true. I can't say I made the decision. It is just like, I think, but if you look at your charter, it was made for you. It was made for me. It was like there was destiny there and, uh, luckily I had the energy and the freedom to run with it because I was, art was never about money for me. It was, it was more like a spiritual calling. We were all in the early seventies, very experimental. And then there was a show called American Art Now 1971, that toured Australia and, New Zealand and that was like a lot of minimal art. Lucy Lippard and Mel Bochner and, you know, Mel Bochner would just do a circle of little river stones, and that was art. And I just thought, how could that be art? And it was the minimalism that really got me going. And so I was influenced by minimal art and performance art and, you know, Joseph Boyce or the European Shamanistic Art and performance and I loved it. And what do you feel it opened up in you? Uh, just that, um, creativity can happen in all areas, but it was an expansion of the context really. That's what really expanded that. But, uh, can be whatever you want it to be. Uh, that is the create and you could use everyday object. You know, you could use pebbles, you could use matchsticks, you could do anything to create installations. And so taking them out of one context, you know, everyday context and putting it into an art context, yes. Gave it a symbolic uh, interpretation. And that was a, so it was just shifting context with everyday objects and then just like duchant getting a ural and turning the upside down and calling it fountain and you know, signing an and I thought, wow, art can be that simple. You, it was a profound, you go into the symbolism, it's quite profound.'cause it was alchemical. Yes. Yeah. And so it was a lot of deep stuff. But the simple act of. Of dislocating an, everyday object from one context, putting it into an art context, reforming or, or revisioning, the symbolism of it. I just thought, that's freedom. So everything can be art or everything can be made into art. I love the freedom of all that. And it's the shift in perspective that comes so that if you can then translate that into your own life Yeah. And you can shift your own perspectives by shifting your context. Yeah. Then that's where liberation is. Context. Context is everything. And context. Yeah. Trumps yeah. The concept. And it trumps the content and it shifts it completely. Wow. So. I'm learning so much here'cause we have so many conversations, but I never went through this, kind of, I won't say it's because it's not linear, but it's, it's it's mapping in a sense, isn't it? It's connecting dots in a different way. And so, so this is post your Saturn return. So it's post that first marriage and it's post, now I'm in Australia, and so now you're in Australia, beginning of 1976, came to Australia, which Australia is so different. I mean, I remember coming in 92 and thinking it's a small town, Sydney. Yeah, I'd been to Australia in the early seventies, which had a couple of friends of mine. Um, but in 76 I moved here. Um. In 77 Sydney College of the Art Start, I was one of the, and a founding artist. We were getting this new progressive performance and, and conceptual school going. And that was very exciting. Oh my God. How exciting for it to be part of that. Yeah, so we were really at the beginning and my ex professor Jim Allen, um, you know, they were setting up the art school, so I encouraged him to come to Australia to run the art school and and then it was Adrian Hall who was a visiting artist from, uh, he was an English guy that had been with, um, Yoko Ono's assistant and was at Yale University. He came to Auckland University to be an artist in residence. And he was a big influence on me as well. So I was getting all these different influences when I was in my four years at at Oakland University. It was fantastic. I just, I loved it actually because it was visual. We weren't writing a lot there. And I just thought, this is the life for me, the eternal student. And I was, I did 12 years of university life in the end Oh my God. And all that exploration. And then of course, seeing students come and being able to nurture students and being able to open them to different worlds.'cause this is pre-internet, um, pre-internet, pre-computers, pre-internet, and pre-computers, which means that you basically, if you didn't have the privilege of traveling overseas to go see shows. Yeah. You know, then it was a case of that you, it was either through books mm-hmm. Or through other people who were involved in the arts and people, it's the sparking of an idea always. You know, isn't it? You hear a name or something happens and you go, oh, I want to know more about that. Yeah. And when you are in that space in the seventies and the eighties, and even into the nineties, I mean, I thought design at a university in the nineties. Mm-hmm. And there was email, but there wasn't. That's right. There wasn't the internet and the way that we take it for granted now. And so as a consequence, you know, it had to be that you had to love the art in yourself rather than yourself in the art. Yeah. Which I think has become, you know, the Instagram world that we live in, um, where people are styling and, I was super passionate about, you know, okay, I'm a designer as opposed to an artist that it's gotta come from within you. You know, it's gotta come from your curiosity. It's gotta come from your exploration. Absolutely true. All of that is true. And it has a context Yes too. And I was lucky and. In New Zealand, I was part of some of the very early Biennales in Australia. There was the, we had the, in the 1972, I think it was the beginning of, um, the Mada Mildura Sculpture Biennale, and that was my first major Biennale. I didn't go to better some of the postgraduate people from the Elam School of Arts went there. And, uh, that's sort of brief thing for this. So that was, that was like a real kudos thing that we got into there. And then in 76 i, in the first Biennale in Australia, and I was in a number of international biam. So, uh, I was ATI time there of a decade or so, which I was, you know, I was starring in my own little world and, uh, and loving it. Legend. Beyond your, it was just an expansion from, you know, like, I think I've said. To you before. I love Jung's statement that we all walk in shoes too small for us. And New Zealand was too small for me, even though that my contemporary artist who stayed in New Zealand had very successful art careers and lives and did a very well in terms of money and living off their art. I, mine was much more performance and installation based. It wasn't really saleable art that I was doing. And then I went back, uh, and did a, my master's degree at, new South Wales University that was a master in finance. And then later on in that I did my PhD at the same university. But there's a connection with the spirituality in your and the arts in your PhD. Yeah, from what I recall, yeah. So was the spirituality being woven through? All along, or is it something that came to the fore later on?'cause art is spiritual. Yeah, absolutely. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a spiritual impulse. Yeah. Yeah. The creative impulse that comes from deeper than the psyche. I was getting into Jung and Dreams and, uh, yin analysis a lot, and then voice dialogue, which was a model, I was training myself. And so from, my first astrology, then I just threw myself into it learning astrologies. And two years I was giving, you know, professional readings to people. Uh, and I loved it. I couldn't believe that you could, you know, your first breath can set up a blueprint. That unfolds for the rest of your life. And I'm now 77, and that blueprint is still in a, in its own dynamism of unfoldment, it doesn't stop unfolding. So I love that, you know, that it's a dynamic, uh, astrology gives its potential look to look at a dynamic unfoldment, of your inner life, of your psyche or your soul, or your subjectivity, or however you wanna call it, but it's your inner reality, which I like to call Psyche. So psyche dash souls psych. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me. And yeah, so my, all my work became, um, uh, psyche based, you know Yeah. Archetypally based, psyche based. And I've was always interested in, because of all of that watery nature and, and the, unpredictable and, uh, you know, challenging dynamic of my mother. And with her, with her, you know, strong energy and then her kind of love hate dynamic that I grew up with her, there was a fascination with the feminine. And, you know, my father was absent in my life. He, you know, came back from the war and you know, et cetera. He had his own stuff going on. But it was just, you know, I had this wonderful grandmother that I would see for six weeks of the year at Christmas holidays. I would have unconditional love from him and then I'd go back into the crazy, uh, conflict dynamics of my own family. And so that, that really brought a curiosity of, the feminine archetype. You know, my mother could, I could easily project onto my mother a Carly unpredictable, rather dangerous Carly type archetype that she was unconsciously living out. So somewhere when I was a young kid, I had to negotiate that. So I had to find my own, psychic power that I could, which was a hypersensitivity, to be able to pick the nuances of when she was turning into what I, you know, now call the, her dark, her unconscious, dark side, uh, and when she was safe. So it was about safe space and dangerous spaces. So, and, and so that created a big inquiry into me and still goes on, you know, and a fascination for the repression of the feminine. You know, I started off doing life classes and then I was a fashion photographer for a while, so I've always loved the, the you, the stereotypical, but also the archetypal of the feminine and of, you know, the 5,000 years of repression. So I did a lot of research into the repression of the feminine within the masculine and also the repression of the feminine within cultural, you know, dynamics, which still goes on, still, there's still, you know, equality is still yet to be achieved between the masculine and the feminine. And I think you achieve it first on the inside and then you can achieve it on the outside. But there has to be a rebalancing, oneself internally. I think there's so much in that. There's so much in it. I mean, one of the quotes that I remember from our conversations, and I have used it a few times in conversations, and it always throws people offside because I said that you say that all mothers are good enough. Mm-hmm. As in the children survive. Yeah. And like, and I think what we don't credit most mothers with. Particularly when we're children is that they're just living their life and doing their best. Yeah. And they're not equipped and they don't know. And they're, you know, trying to navigate the practicalities of living in a material world as well as being this nurturer and the archetype of the mother. That's the loving nurturer. And, which, you know, I mean, my own mother at times would definitely kind of get into the point of being resentful of it. And my mother and I had a very balanced, gorgeous, you know, mother who, you know, was very practical. Um, and so you really see, you see this kind of fight that we have within ourselves and, you know, and one of the things that we've spoken about many times, is the polarity. And you know, and I love the polarities. I really like the conversation around the polarity between good and evil. And there's a whole, as I say, there's a whole access between both of those that you can choose, that you can choose to live into. But what I really want to e explore more deeply with this is the tantra. I've studied tantra and is about the integration of the masculine and feminine. And I think that the present economic, the present society, the evolution of our society has done a great disservice to the male in the same way that it has done an even greater disservice to the female. And so it's such an interesting topic to be able to. To come to peace within ourselves with that balance. And you know, and from studying tantra, it's like, you know, we're like 40% male, 60% female. You know, it's, there's not much in it. Not much in it. No. And yet we live in a society that advocates and keeps on talking about gender. And now of course we have an even more complicated landscape, but we're not gonna go there. But, but within everyone, there is this dynamic doing and being, and the feminine is the dynamic. You know, it's, a friend of mine describes it as that the landscape is the masculine and the feminine is the weather and the feminine shapes it. One is the form and one is shaping the form. It's a lovely way to put it. I've never seen it that way, but I like it. Yeah. And it's ever changing. Yeah. And in astrology, getting back to masculine feminine, you look at an astrology chart, you know, six signs of feminine a yang, six signs are yang masculine. And I like to see it in terms of principles more than gender dynamics. Yes. You know? Yeah, yeah. Gender for me is a mixture of our instinct, our sexuality, and our mind. And, so genders changes that can change over a lifetime for some people, some people that are deeply connected to their biology and that's who they are, and they won't shake on that. Therefore, the feminines projected out onto their primary partners except, and they have to carry the feminine, not only within themselves, but for their significant male, other as well. How, how do you balance all that out? You know, each person finds their own way through that. But yeah, I like to see in principles, you know, when you've got yin energies, you are open, you're feeling, you are, can be emotional, but you're picking up the feeling tone. You know, the, the emotions come from the heart center. And so it was just too much heart energy when I was a young kid without being able to defend it. And in terms of parents, I looked at my mother, my mother's mother, and you can see the, you know, the sins of the grandparents that passed onto, passed down to my mother and then passed down onto me. And then some way, in terms of inner work, we can break that passing down, you know, we can heal it for, yeah. For the lineage. And I like that in a way that I, I felt like I've healed something in my, my own lineage. Um, I think that's really. I think that's so interesting because, you know, if you, the second house is our house of say, self-worth and our house of value. It's also how we make our money, you know? So it's how we bring value into the world by owning our own value and opening what we do and what we do it well. And then I also see the fourth house, which is the house of lineage. And it's the house where we, chose who was the primary care when you were a child. Yeah. You know, and the impact of that. And there's a discussion about whether it's ruled by the mother or the father. You know, cancer and the moon are connected with the fourth house, and so obviously that's feminine water is feminine. Yeah. And then, but if the primary. Say provider was masculine, then, you know, the, there's a strong, it's a reversal, wasn't it? There's a reversal. Yeah. But I really think that there's not enough emphasis put on that fourth house because until such a time as you can transcend all of that lineage. Yeah. It's like you don't come into the belonging of yourself. That's, and we need the belonging of ourselves before we go into that fifth house, which is like our first expression into the world in a sense. Yeah. As we move out into that external space. Yeah. Yeah. The fourth house is, you know, psychologically early the childhood. Yeah. Um, and it's the dominant parent, whoever that is. Uh, and it's also what can I say about the fourth house? Uh, it, it's a massive house, for me, um, having in the model I used in my moon and Scorpio in the fourth house, my mother. You know, the, the moon represents the mother, you know, uh, emotional body, uh, the inner child of the past. So I love how archetypes are multidimensional, that that can be valid on a many, different levels of interpretation. So, fourth house and, and fourth house you know, as I'm in the last phase of my life is really our, it's our emotional, it's a. Emotional inner life, I feel Yes. Is very strong for me. So, uh, so yeah, it evolves out of early childhood, connecting to the dominant parent, and then it becomes your psychological at Homeness because the, you know, the cusp of the fourth house is the ic, you know, the midnight sun. So it's the most sensitive, uh, subjective aspect of us. And it's, in terms of doing, in inner work or healing work, one has to, one is challenged to go back into those.'cause that's where the. The patterns, you know, that's where our defense structure started to form our defensive personality aspects of who we are. So we have the opportunity to go back and undo and re-explore those and to liberate those instead of being kind of contractions from childhood to work through them and create a sense of, you know, a sense of freedom from sense of understanding and liberation really. And one of the things that fa has always fascinated me is the cycles and rhythms. And I've redrawn Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is this spiral. Yeah. And overlaid it onto the edical wheel. Perfect. So, so the concept of it is, is that, you know, at our essence, you know, it's like the seed has all that, the flower, the tree, or the whatever can become Yeah. But it must root And this is down into the fourth house Yeah. As it shoots up into the 10th house. Yeah. And if we see it as a spiral. As it goes through every year we're gathering and building a little bit more in each house and coming into more consciousness with it. Yeah. But as we're receiving, we're also releasing. Yeah. And I think as we're talking in, you know, we're in tourist season right now, which is the most kind of embodied, very embodied, you know, but TAUs like is, wants to touch, taste, feel, you know, it wants it all that is earthy. And of course it's polarity can be that it's super greedy, you know? But when it's operating well, it's receiving and it's also releasing. That's right. Yeah. TAUs, what's mine? Tourists. Well, it is, yeah. It's possession. They love possession. They love, oh dear. Know the tourist archetype. Um, money gives them emotional support. Well, it's the most material of the signs. It's the most material of the signs. And yet it is a great quality of sensuality, uh, connection to eating, sensuality, sexuality. If it's a developed archetype, it's a fantastic, it's the pleasure principle. And ruled by, ruled by Venus, you know, ruled by Venus. Yeah. You know, and it's, it's, it's loving love and love and sex. It's love and sex. And it's, and it's also, it's our animal instinct. You know? I mean, you know, it's seen as being the bull, but it's actually the fallopian tubes, you know, it's the womb, which is the symbolism of it. And. And it really is saying, you are your greatest resource. Yeah. You know, which is the second house, which is that self worth and that self value. Yeah. So my next question for you is, how do you see that you have been a benefactor of your future self? Because, you know, there's this incremental unfolding and you are now at the point of maturity whatever that means. We never get there. Yes. Well, we hope, well, some parts we wanna child deeply mature. Yeah. We wanna hold the child. That's right. Some, you know, aspects, parts of our psychic remain in the children forever. And I think you need to be, you know, need to be in a safe space, or you need one needs to, one is challenged to give a safe space to those, you know, wounded. Parts of ourselves, you know? Mm-hmm. The part, the early childhood imprints that carried trauma of not feeling loved, not feeling seen. All of this, I mean, everybody, I feel everybody that goes through childhood has trauma. No matter how great you think your childhood was completely trauma there. Well, everybody has Chiron. Everybody has a wound. Yes. And so two things on that. One is that I think that we're always gotta be aware that we have to parent or reparent or however we want to call it, to be in that dialogue with that inner child. Yeah. So that, you know, and we're saying, okay, well we're adult, we will take care of that because otherwise we're leading from our wounds and leading from that inner child. Yeah. And the other thing, oh my God, have I lost my thread? The other thing is that I. Oh yeah. The, the most difficult thing as you get older is for, to hold the absolute curiosity and awe and wonder of this amazing world that we live in. Yeah. And I think that's a great gift for your vitality, to be energized. You know, when the world has battered and bruised you, as I say, you know, do you wanna get better or do you wanna be bitter? Yeah, yeah, exactly. We have choices to, I think, when you look at, the blueprint of astrology we're, we're being dynamically transformed over a lifetime, whether we're aware of it or not. The great thing about, maps like astrology and the Enneagram and the diamond approach and, internal family systems and voice dialogue, all of these are maps to put over the psyche to, expand your understanding of who and what you are. And so I think this map is dynamically transforming you anyway. And if we can co-create with the map, once we know what a transit is, like I had, you know, Uranus opposite Moon once I knew that. And Uranus wants to bring insight and freedom to, rather kind of. A Moon Chiron dynamic, a rather wounded, uh, inner child, you know, dynamic, a wounded around my mother and the whole feminine lineage that I was subjected to when I was young. You've gotta get back there and you've gotta undo some of those personality structures. I feel, we co-create with the archetypes as a more elevated way of dealing with archetypes and astrology. We we join in with the process of transformation, uh, rather than being transformed by, you know, the cosmos, we, we participate, and then it's a co-creation with the cosmos and yourself on evolving your potentials. I love that. And I think that's how I see it. I see the blueprint as being an invitation and you know, and I think in a world where there's a lot of choice Yeah. And there's a lot of possibility. And yet we are here to live in a limited way, which is, what Saturn is teaching us. You can't choose everything. You know, I call it a kind of abundant minimalism. Okay. You know, so it's this space of where, you know, Saturn wants to teach you that you need constraints. And I find a lot of creatives go, oh no, no, no, I don't want to, you're gonna put me in a structure. It's like, no. Well the structure will serve you and the structure will liberate you and your systems will liberate you. Yeah. Which is the sixth house in a sense. Um, and obviously Saturn, and I noticed that you talked about Uranus and the moon, but you're about to have, Uranus. Um, or sorry, Jupiter conjunct your, natal Uranus in the 12th thousand Gemini. What do you, what do you think that's gonna, liberate, uh, Jupiter? Um, I have no idea. Actually. Jupiter is the great, great, you know, it's fic, it's factor, it's an extension, but going back to Saturn. I must say,'cause I don't have any earth in my chart. You know, I'm fire and water. Uh, my struggle with Saturn, it was took half of my life up. I hated Saturn. I hated the Saturn transits. It was always a tough reality hit. And I had to come out of my wonderful, you know, boundless imagination had to come out of that, into pragmatic reality. So it's taken half a lifetime and a bit more to actually understand the, the lessons of Saturn to come to peace with the patience's peace. Yeah. You, in my early life, I married toss. That was like marrying a very earthy Oh my God. Yeah. That would've been challenging. Uh, they were fantastic. I loved it, but it was, it was displacement. It wasn't. You know, it wasn't integrating my own earthiness. It was somebody, an artist, significant, uh, yeah. Artist. So, to an artist Yeah. Who were, you know, bringing whatever their visions were into form. And, that was a clash between my artist expression and their artist expression. And they had the, you know, I was thinking of Riner on this one, uh, Croatian, uh, performance artist I was with and married to for a while. It was just like such a powerful, energy to manifest. And I, I like things, you know, half a half unmanifest. I like to keep them in the, mystery, the mutable zone mystery. But, but rarely it was, yeah, it was compensatory and I had to learn to reclaim what they carried for me, reclaim my Saturn, or reclaim my earthy. Quality or even reclaiming my, you know, the pleasure of, physical life really, you can say Yeah. That they carry. So when, those relationships ended, there was all, there was a throwing back of all my projections back onto myself to do some really serious and a work. So yeah, Saturn's been a challenge. And Jupiter, Jupiter's always been good for me. I, Jupiter, you know, in Sagittarius. Mm-hmm. And Jupiter's the teacher, and I, I lived as the teacher for a long time and I still do, you know, 20 years as an academic. And I was a very good teacher, um, rather defensive teacher the cancer ascendant. Um, but once students, you know, negotiated that I, I could really help them with their own creativity really. And, to become the teacher, you must be the student. And the ongoing student because of the good, great teachers are always on their own journey of exploration and discovery. And that's what keeps teaching dynamic and interesting. And I think really, I mean, I teach yoga is one of the things. The other one I do is branding. Um, but I can always tell when I go to a yoga class if someone doesn't have their own practice. Yeah, yeah. And it is that, yeah. Grounded vitality in that expression, whether it's in art or creativity or in astrology, you know, you really feel somebody who's in the space of mastery. Yeah. And you're certainly in the space of mastery in your creativity and in your astrology. It's very, it is super dynamic within you. Well, it's mastery there. And, and I think that's true, just. Through, decades of doing it. But there's also that thing of being the eternal student. When I, I spent 12 years at uni, you know? Yeah. And I talked at uni, so I was a surrogate student there. And I love that, you know, that, it's the beginner's mind with curiosity, you know, everything's interesting, in that sense. So we're the endless student, I think. Yeah. But not in the sense that, committing yourself to one particular line of development where it's that thing of open curiosity. I think and that, that catch cry that many people use now is just curiosity is such a key because the curiosity comes from, our. Right brain. Yeah. As opposed to the rational left brain and that curiosity it brings about balance, curiosity, inquiry, uh, openness. So really it's, I think with me, I had a highly developed, uh, right brain and had to actually work quite a bit on getting my left brain up to balance the two out. And now I like to work with to both. I love the left brain, I love the rational. You know what I called, yeah. What's it? Discriminating awareness, to be able to dis critical and discriminating quality of what works and what doesn't work. There's a great quality of that side of the brain to be used, but not to the extent that it rules out, uh, creative, curious side. So yeah, balancing the brains is important, I think. And it's interesting'cause in, you know, again, going back to the RAs Yeah. And the four Noble pursuits, you know, we need that purpose, which then we need the prosperity, which is creating the resources to be able to fund and feed and create and realize that mission that we've decided that we're going to do. Yeah. And then how do we build an ecosystem around it, which is, you know, the pleasure, which is the relationships and yours are in earth signs, you know, they're all in earth. You know, your third house, your seventh house, your 11th, you know, so it's grounding that and realizing that, nothing happens in isolation, which I think has or has it been a challenge for you to realize, okay, I really need to foster these relationships for two. Bring my work into the world. Yeah. Yeah. My whole thing is, it's really is about know thyself. Yeah. Really is. Yeah. It's like my driving force, what they have, you know, what was it over? And then when I was doing my jgi, and it was the, the Oracle of Delphi, they had know thyself above it. You'd go there to heal and to have healing dreams. And I, I just love that because I, I was totally oblivious to myself when I was young. Mm. Until, right up until my, you know, late twenties. I was so unconscious and it really took the first Saturn return. It was a massive kick in my whole reality to wake me up. Uh, and that was the beginning of the inner inquiry, which, is still very passionate to me. And, and I love all the models of the inquiry. You know, get to know yourself as much as you can. And, you know, astrology is a blueprint. And it's a map. And then you throw away the map. Once you've integrated the quality, you don't have to keep on referring back to the map. So with astrology, I tend to look backwards rather than forwards.'cause I've got such a creative mind, I can make things happen and, you know, via the, as astrology. So I disciplined myself about looking backwards actually. And um, when I think of Uranus on Jupiter, uh, well what does that mean to me? And I think, well, it's a catch cry. I have freedom. You know, Jupiter is freedom and expansion and Uranus is about insight. And it's like, that's it for me. You know, that's the correspondence to the transits is freedom is the number one, quality. I'm researching, looking for wanting in myself. I. But you also bring a great discipline to that. You know, I mean, and this podcast is called The Discipline of Freedom. Yeah. But'cause I look at people who go through, you know, those significant transits of, your Saturn return. Yeah. Then there's the Uranus opposition, and then there's the car in return, and then there's the next Saturn return. Mm-hmm. And obviously there's other transits in there, but those are tend to be, they're the big ones. They're the big ones. And what can you offer, like what would you suggest to people? Because, okay, so let me just preface that with, I believe that at any stage we're apprenticing to something. Like we're learning and we're opening up to something new. Yeah. And then there's also a space of where we've got a, we've got a flow with it, you know, we're beginning to integrate it. Yeah. And then there's this space where we're either, it's in our lives and we'll continue to serve, as in our lives are, we're destroying it and letting it go. Yeah. And I think that what I see with creatives and what I see, particularly with identities and, and branding, there's so much about identity. Yeah. But your identity is constantly changing. At any stage, you're holding an identity of, you know, maybe a sister or a mother, or a brother or a father. Yeah. A CEO or a worker or a carpenter. You know, it's so unimportant. And yet we live in a world that's so attached to that identity. Yeah. And those particular moments, those particular transitions are gonna challenge that identity every time. Yeah. If you come back to another model, which was, you know, we have a essence self, a core self that is always undamaged. And then we have these, the fci Yeah, we have the parts, you know, which astrology gives you 10 parts or 12 parts, depending on whether it's planets or houses. But those parts, uh, to be explored and, to be liberated so that core self can be free to express its potential. That's how I understand it. So we are continually going back and going deeper into, it's a spiral. You know, we spiral deeper and deeper into the psyche to release those nuances that stop, Uranus, conjunct, Jupiter, a real sense of freedom, you know? Yeah. And expansion. Yeah. And I think that's for me. What it's all about psychologically. No. And Venus follows the Fibonacci the way that I Venus Maslow's Yeah. Maslow's hierarchy of human needs drawn as a spiral. Yeah. I suppose the question really is, is how can you meet yourself where you're at? And I sincerely believe like the past is always present. Yeah. And the future is always present as well. Yeah. And so we're conditioned to, you know, to future trip. Yeah. And for, to be based on the past. Yeah. And I think the challenge is, how do you let your past inform your future, but not dictate it? Uh. I think you've gotta go into your past. I think you do too. That's, you can't bypass it. You know, that's thing of psychological bypassing that often happens. Spiritual bypassing. Well, spiritual bypassing is, I don't think it's, I think it's a missed term actually. I think spiritual bypassing should be re really reframed as psychological, bypassing. Absolutely. Yeah. Because yeah, I've done the, spiritual bypassing, I've been non-dual, I've been to, into the sata and, uh, that whole thing that you are just pure awareness and I love it. It's the foundation of. Of who I am at an invisible level. And, and yet you go back into the psyche where all the knocks are and the wounds and all of that, and you start to undo some of that, you know, some of those rocks in the road. So, so the presence, the personal presence of one can just be there uninterrupted. It's a subtle open state of being. Um, I love that. You know, I love that. But when my personal self gets involved, it can color that. And they, I think they have a term for it. You've gotta, in a way, delink'cause the essential self is there and everything, but it's identified with, the professional self or the wounded self. And so there's a de-linking going on, coming back to, you know, what I call the center of the chart, you know, the essence of which expresses itself through the 10 archetypal powers. Yeah. And so you always come me coming back to. Just the simplicity of presence, awareness, which is the center of the chart with all its potential. And from that, you know what's, that's truly what I call psychological at homeness. Then we, we can then go back out into the archetypes and that is the absolutely the greatest gift that we have to offer ourselves and everybody else. Is that the present of our presence? Yeah. And that is the seed in its full bloom, which is yeah. Unfolding through our lives. I would add one more thing. There's the presence of our presence and there's the awareness of our awareness. Yes. Because both have it, like when you're just, if you're present to your presence or you are aware to your awareness. I mean, that's spiritual home for me. Uh, and that goes beyond archetypes and in a more pragmatic way, to just ground this. And I think we could talk forever. Um, what would you say to somebody who's entering into their first Saturn return and struggling? And then we'll go through the Uranus opposition in a second. Uh, first Saturn return. Let go, let go, let go, let go. That's all you can do. Yeah. That Saturn will take away from you what's not working. what it leaves behind will be. What's working. Saturn, it's a maturity. It's you're letting go of 28 years of childhood. I burnt down my life with my Saturn return. Yeah. So, that's it. You know, it's a huge phase. It's much more powerful than the second Saturn return at 56. But the first one, it's a grand slam, but not to everybody, but just for those that are open to it, uh, it whacks everybody. But not everybody's affected in a, and it all has to do with the placement of the satin and your chart. Of course, of course. And I see it the first satin return is the invitation into patients pays. Uh, I am an Aries Yeah. Son. So we'll go to the invitation into patient pay. Patience pays. It is invitation into. Creating foundations and structures and learning how constraints actually liberate you. Yeah. Um, so it is the adulting moment of realizing, oh wow, nobody's going to rescue me. Yeah. I need to take self, self-responsibility. I need to come into my self-awareness. I need to come into my conscious awareness. I need to come into that space of my presence is my present. Right. And what, and who do I want to become? Yeah. And I need to let go of childhood patterns. Blaming and displacement. it's taking, it's, yeah. It's claiming maturity and it's also letting go of how you've been conditioned up until 27, 28. If you can move into it, and Saturn. Saturn works you over, basically. I love Saturn. I really do see Saturn as a blessing. It's a teacher. Yeah, it is. The teacher, the master teacher. It's the toughest teacher for me.'cause not having notes on my chart, but and now I really value it. You know, I really like, it's really, I'm gonna working on the, the wisdom of the body, which is the physicality. That's saddened in a way. It is, yeah. Yeah. Rule Capricorn. Yeah. Which is associated with the 10th house. Yeah. And how we show up and, and it's our bone system and our legacy. Yeah, that's right. What we leave behind. It's a great teacher. So it's a great teacher. It is a great teacher. But I, I do struggle with it. It's been, it's been a really tough teacher for me saying. Well, looking at your chart, I can see how it's a tough teacher for you's tough in relationships. Yeah. Oh God. It is tough in relationships set in return and then, uh, and then, you know, my relationships, you know, shadow dynamics set often carries, uh, limitations in the shadow of who we are. So shadow dynamics get going for me, and you have your Saturn sitting in between Pluto, which is the Great Transformer and also Mars. Yeah. It's there for, to teach you that you are your own greatest resource in that second house. You know, it is in Leo. So that's the creativity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the look at me. Uh, and that's what I liked about an astrology. You know, you've got a cancer ascendant, it's defensive, you know, it's suspicious. And then you get the LEO energy and being an artist, it was so compensatory that like, look at me. You don't have to look at me directly. My cancer center can't handle it. But look at the art that I do. I can be monumental. Massive. Shocking. Uh, I can do anything. There are no rules. I can break boundaries. So I, I love that actually. It's the fire. And that's what Leo is really, I've always. Said that the, the royal family is the great example of Leo in terms of the pageantry and the adornment and being able to play a role. Yeah. And knowing that we play many different roles and being able to be amused and entertained by this other role that you are playing in this moment in time, which is so liberating. It's, it's a part of me, but, but it's also essential me as well. Yeah. So I see the role as the artist, as the role that I project, and underneath that is the core me or the essence me that is expressing itself through. Creativity through the role? Yes. I think, well, it's more than the role. I saw creativity as a calling for me.'cause I wasn't good at writing. I wasn't, I was kicked outta school at 14 and a half. And so image making visual, the visual imaginal world was really, it's another where I could learn. Yeah. And it's a language. Yeah. That's extraordinarily powerful. Leonard Slain, who used, was a surgeon who's wrote several books, The Art Meets the Goddess, and I'm gonna mix up his titles, but essentially what he said was that Art will herald what science will later prove. Yeah. Because imagination goes first, and one of my favorite quotes is that Einstein one is that imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited to everything we've known, seen, or experience. Whereas imagination, will it take you? Everywhere. Then you need the knowledge, and then you need the knowledge for it to bring it back into form and to realize it. So you need to soar with the unbounded imaginal kind of reality, I see it, it is an essential dimension of the psyche called, uh, creative dynamism or dynamic creativity. It's in everybody and it's conditioned out of most people. Uh, and I see it as a, as much as coming into the present is essential, the creative dynamism is essential, and there's a few others that I think are essential dimensions of the psyche that, become, you know, essential aspects. So yeah, there's whole models you can build. On the psyche. And I love how people remodel the psyche and reframe it and rebrand it. Because you know what we talk about in Australia, it's an archetypal language, and that language is open to many different interpretations. And you know, when I say Mars, I have a particular meaning of what was like to be a martial kid or what, what it was like not to be a marshal kid and the implications of that. And so, yeah, each person responds to the archetype in each way. I like it. So I think in life it's through what comes our way. We find our own path, you know? Yeah. Uh, we, we find our own path driven by archetypal outer planet Transits. You know, there's a wonderful book, which I lost them a while ago, but it used to be one of my bibles called, uh, cycles of Becoming by, uh. A Swiss astrologer called Rui Pui, his name was, and I used to love that because it had all the cycles of unfoldment that happens with the other planets. Oh, wow. And it's just a amazing we cycles of becoming. And I really love that notion. That's what we are, we, we even continu cycle, that's becoming, Yeah. And still, until we're not. Yeah. And so, so then moving to the next transit, what do you, the year, the Uranus opposition, which occurs around 42, what do you think? Well, that's the midlife transition, midlife crisis. For a lot of people it's, it starts, I think there are three or four of them that happened there. There's the Pluto Square, uh, is the Uranus opposition, Uranus, the Pluto Square. And then I think there's some Saturn transit in there as well. Every seven years you get a mini Saturn in there, and then you have the Neptune Square, Neptune, that whole four year cycle. That changes, that changes people that's like, that's outta planet whack, whack, whack, whack. And uh, and the Pluto Square is we've, you know, been around a couple of people with the Pluto Square, you know, whatever you've repressed Pluto, whatever you're holding dark, you know, energies in the conscious nurse that can be repressed, instinctive energies or whatever. Like Pluto brings up unconscious material. So it's a very powerful, really, um, primal transformation agent Pluto, if, if you allow it once again, I have this whole approach, like if you've got into Pluto, transits be Pluto, like really, how do you need to transform? What's essential? What shadow material is arriving? How do you deal with anger and hatred how do you deal with repressed love if you've never experienced love? I mean, Pluto will bring up unconscious material and that's where it changes us. And this is around the age of 37 to 42. 37 to 42. Yeah. I mean, for me, I started seriously probably on my spiritual path around that time. Yeah. Just to put it in context, I had a business which I loved and was working extraordinarily well for me. Then I was questioning that everybody wanted to sound and look the same. I had a branding agency. Yeah. And I was going, come on, we need to be more authentic. Why do you care why would Vodafone care what Telstra was doing? Why would you know Apple Care what Microsoft was doing? These were the people that I was working with. And it was so interesting from that point of view I also got married the, the, I married a vineyard and you know, there was cultural challenges, but there was also just, you know, let's, as a friend of mine said one time, it's not culture, it's character and it's young thing of if there's a chemical reaction, well then both people are changed. Yeah. And it spun my life once more. Yeah. You know, everything dissolved in that Pluto Square, Uranus opposition, mini Saturn return. Yeah. You know, um, Neptune. Square dissolving the dream. Dissolve. Yeah. It was, the dream and the dream beautiful. All this Uranus. It's so exciting. It's over the top. I've found the wild card that I need to be around. And then so that happens. And then Saturn is, you know, after seven months of that, then the reality hurt of, uh, of quack cancer, quack, whack, and then Pluto brings out all the unconscious material that you never wanted to expose to anybody comes into. And then Neptune comes and dissolves the dream. So you can create a. In a sense of spaciousness or new dream for your materials to dream a new dream. It's a fantastic transit. It's a fantastic transit, but I'm pleased. I'm on the other side of it a long time ago. That's all I can say. Um, David White, the poet has a great one. He says that, he read in a newspaper of Harley Davidson for sale, only ridden for six weeks through midlife crisis. And he, and he ends it with it, what is it? Her premium range has everything that you need. That's right. Yeah. It's a red sports car. Yeah. And people throw away. Marriages, they throw away careers, second adolescence completely. You know, you're, you're growing old and then that you're, you're in uranian kind of drive for excitement of freedom, just, and you also begin to look for meaning. You know, you ask the question you know, in your twenties, you're in that exploration phase and you're in that kind of the nave or the handmaiden and you're kind of going like, oh, how does the world work? And where's my part in it? Yeah. And then when you get into your thirties, you are in the prince of the princess where you are building your kingdom. You possibly settle down, you maybe get a mortgage, you build a career so you're there feeling like, oh wow, we've got it all together. And then in your forties, yeah, this comes and kind of goes like, well that was all a great facade, wasn't it? Welcome to reality. And, and I'm a great believer in building assets because I think that they're really useful because to be a benefactor of your future self. But, you know, people come to me and they say, oh my god, mentoring so expensive. And I say, try divorce. It'll distract you for five years and take away at least half of everything that you've worked for. Yes. So that's a really important transit, I think, to manage. Um, it's the big one. Yeah. It really is the big one. And, and with Pluto Transits once, my kind of advice always, if Pluto's it is knocking on your door. Knocking on your door. Do see the Pluto Square. Pluto is, related to, uh. The, uh, Sumerian myth of Nana. Oh, yes, yes. And Nana having to go into the underground, uh, that's the Pluto Square. And, and she's hung on a hook. And then all her, you know, wonderful clothes. Oh, oh my God. I associate with Scorpio. Yeah. And she's just there as a skeleton on a hook in the underground until she's recovered type of thing. But it's a bit like with Pluto Transits, you can be stripped bare and it can be, uh, really challenging to, you know, to keep centered as you're being stripped away of what's not ential in your life now. Mm-hmm. I like to see it. And what's essential will remain, if anything remains. It's a psychological death rebirth process. It is. Completely, and absolutely. And it's more than that. It's the death and then there's the gap, and then there's a rebirth. So there's actually three phases in it and a two to three year Pluto transit. It's powerful. Very powerful. It is very, very, very powerful.. And to resist it, uh, if you resist that and try to remain the same, you can get physically and psychologically really sick. Yeah. So you, it's important to enter into it, to co-create. To co participate. Yeah. With your own evolution. Um, it's interesting'cause in the lineage that I follow, we talk about seven years of cycles. Yeah. You are right. Seven years is the cycles of consciousness. Yeah. 11 years is a cycle of intelligence and how you use it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Then 18 years is a physical cycle. Okay. Right. And so the first, so when they cluster, there's, yeah. There's really big change in your life. There's no need to explain the one from 18 to 22. No. You know, which is, two cycles of intelligence. Yeah. Three cycles of consciousness and one cycle of physicality. Yeah. So then the next one is 33 to 36. Yeah. And, and you get away with, I won't say you get away with murder, but you get away with a lot physically, mentally, and emotionally until that age of 36. Yeah. But if you then aren't in the space of where you've learned your lessons, which we could talk about Saturn. Yeah. It can really manifest, and I think it manifests in what we're speaking about, which is that Uranus opposition, that pollutes square. That Neptune, yeah. And also that mini Saturn return. Yeah. So. My title for that is called Grand Slam. Thank you, man. That's what happens. And you try to hold on to who you used to be in the past. Yeah. To the identity Grand Slam. Thank you, man. Comes in and shatters your reality so you can psychologically mature and mature and, and, and, you know, and if you, and embrace potential. Of course. Yes. And also I think if you have that grand slam and you're aware of it, you become a better parent. You become a better worker. You know, you become, I become a good enough there when you become, when you become more, um, compassionate and more empathetic. Yeah. Because your power now connects with your humility. You are aware of your own fragility and you've learned your own strengths. Yeah. And you're probably developing, um. Self-compassion. Yeah. You know, you're starting to get compassionate for, you know, the inner child or the past mm-hmm. That are parts of you that carry trauma and wounding. Yeah. And, so you're more gentle with the more vulnerable, uh, parts of who we are. So let's move on to Yeah. That great car in return of 49 Car on return. Uh, David White talks about for men that they keep on trying to avoid the conversation and then by the time they get to their car in return, they realize, oh wow. Life is the conversation and of course it's the conversation with yourself. Yeah. The conversation with the other, and the conversation with the, yeah. I don't have a, I don't have clarity around Chiron. Oh, right. Uh, in terms of it's cycles, I've watched it. But it's, um, you know, always Chiron drags me back into my early childhood in the wounding that I had around my emotional body. And, uh, I go, yeah, right back there. And I have the south node there. So I have South Node, moon and Chiron all in, the house of, Scorpio. So, and I see them in the house of, the house system changes. You use Potpourri and I use Whole Signs mostly, and I yeah, move between Poppie, Plaus and Whole Signs. But for here, it's in the fifth house. And which is the house of creativity. It's the house of self-expression. It's the house of children. It's where love affairs begin. Yeah. It's where the romance is. It's where the courtship is, it's where the sex is, it's where the playfulness is. Mm-hmm. So I had a lot of wounding around that when I was young. Yeah. And it's one of the houses of Dharma, you know, it's a how will you express Yeah. Yourself in the world? How will you use that creative juice to create your purpose? And so how did I, well I did that through, uh, doing psychological art. Mm. Um, like really doing, you know, Jungian archetypal psychological exploration was how I expressed all of that. I had a lot of wounding around that aspect of who I was. And so, yeah, I tried to express it in art. Uh, and that was a time in which psychological art was acceptable. And then in the eighties it became, basically postmodern and the subjectivity and art was really not kosher anymore. So, um, but yeah, I don't really have a, I can feel the woundedness and it's, I don't think the Chiron wound I've ever, I ever heal. I, I think I become more compassionate to the wound. That's what's happening. Um, and that is how I understand Kiron. And the other day in another astrological conversation that I was having was that so it's seen as the wound and by the time you get to the 49 is that you are so familiar with the wound or you're aware of it because Kyron is, became a witness, the center wounded healer who couldn't heal himself. Yeah. But he could heal others. Yeah. And so that's where we get to, is get to the point of integrating our wound, you know? Yeah. And learning to live with it. Yeah. And then being able to offer it to the world in terms of through that compassion, through that understanding and becoming. The teacher of how to work with that wound. Yeah. And the wounded healer and the new point that came up was around that if you have a planet next to Kiron. that you have mastery with that particular energy. And for you, that would be with the moon. And my car is sitting right next to my Mars. Right. And I've always, had a real fear of being too much, you know, always being, you know, too much. Yeah. And, I now get to the point where I'm like, oh, well, you know, this is just who I am. Yeah. You know? Well, I had the same thing with my Chiron, uh, moon. You know, like you had Chiron Mars, my Chiron moon, uh, with women. I was called the swamp because of those deep, dark, brooding emotions and the wounding that I carried. Um, you know, when you, when you're understand in the cosmos, you know, Chiron is a point, is an asteroid between Saturn. Saturn yeah. And Uranus. Sa Uranus, yeah. So Saturn is restriction. Uranus is awakening and freedom. You know, it's, it just wants to go for the future. Mm. And Chiron is often about the wounds of the past. So I, I think there's a wonderful, you know, alchemical movement there of, of healing, of, you know, I always saw myself as the wound, as much as I ha wi healed my own wounds, I could heal the wounds of others, you know, because I do identify being the wounded healer. And then when Uranus hit my car on, I just said, just drop the woundedness going. Just yeah. Be the healer. Like I'm in the Uranian aspect of that Saturn to Uranus, you know, restriction to freedom. And then it came along. I said, just be the healer. And so that, that, I think there was a conclusion. That's beautiful of that particular, because I remember you, you speaking about your experience of the fires, of like really realizing just how loved you were and before the fires you, held, you know, anger and, and. It was after leaving university, you know, I was very identified with Sydney College of the Art. It was, you know, it was my baby along, there was only a handful of us that started it. So leaving was like leaving, leaving a whole identity, as the, one of the founding members of Sydney College of the Arts that became part of Sydney University. So yeah, there was a huge loss. When you let go of any identity, there's a sense of loss. Yeah. There. And also a sense of freedom. And we rarely honor the endings in the same way that we honor. That we get so excited about the beginnings. Yeah. And I think that closure is so, so, so important for to honor, to move on and, and, and for, to give ourselves that space for, the transitions, you know? And going back to that kind of, you know, the nave and the handmaiden and then the prince Yeah. The princess of gathering your kingdom. I think when you get to the point of the Chiron return Mm. It's a space of where you move into your queen or your kingship, where you realize it's not about gathering. Yes, yes. Than both. And not about gathering more, but about how do I now share what I've learned. Yeah, that's good. I think you're right. It's the movement between, you know, archetypally being identified with a prince or a princess. Into the king or queen, the royalty within. Oneself it's, yeah. That's, and the eldership in a sense, or the transitioning or the beginning of that, that and the authority that that carries, I think is really Yes. Yes. Yes. That's the acknowledge, that how much you've traveled in the inner inquiry to acknowledge your own authority at a certain point. Otherwise, you're still projecting authorities onto spiritual teachers. That's a wonderful distinction actually, because by the time you get to this point, you've built a body of work. Yeah. And you have this credibility. Yeah. And people, so many people struggle. I mean, I struggle with it myself of owning, which again, comes back to, that the past will inform your future. Yeah. Unless you own your past and integrate your past. Yeah. And the past is. Always present. Yeah. And at that point in time you really, really do have credibility. Yeah. You have built a reputation. Absolutely. You have decided consciously or unconsciously and smarter. If it's consciously Yeah. What it is that you want to be known for, which is that 10th house, which is that legacy. Yeah. And then you have the authority to be able to stand and own that in the world. Yeah. Oh yeah. Nice. Thank you you for that. I appreciate that. And then our second session return, uh, they happened, the second set return for me, it was 56, isn't it? Do Well, you can go anywhere from 56 to 58 to kind of 60, you know, I mean, obviously it shows up in, I think, uh, my sentence, I left university in my late forties and then I, I identified my mythology was being a black. You know, a black wallaby in the bush, reclusive, you know, like not wanting to connect with people. And then the fires came. But, but before the fires came, uh, we are, just to put context on this, we're recording this in Embargo, which was one of the worst hit places in the fires in Australia in 2019, where the entire village was pretty much burnt and many obviously the surrounds. Um, so destroyed my studio as well. Yeah. Um, so you lost your house? I lost everything. Lost everything. Oh, you lost, so your entire identity. I lost all my art collections. Uh, my, you know, um, Buddhas that I'd collect, I had about 20 of them. That was a massive collection and books and, but anyway, that, that was like a zen cleansing for me. Um, but getting back to the second Saturn return, I, I'd realized just after that, I went back to uni in my beginning of 60 to do my PhD. I realized my brain was getting, wasn't using it, my gray matter. And so I went back and did four years at, uh, university in my, yeah, it'd be just after my second round. And I loved it. I went back in there and I just, I love research, you know, uh, I went back and I just had a fantastic time of inquiry and did a great research paper. Got a lot of good credentials for it. Mercury in the eighth house. How could you not love research? Yeah, I loved it. And so, uh, so that was my second set. Returns was like, yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, because I was dyslexic. When I was young and I didn't realize I was dyslexic. I did form an opinion that I was rather dumb. And so something, well, it would've been impressed upon you. Yeah. And then going back in my sixties, I think finally when I didn't finish my PhD, I think I'm not dumb anymore. And so that was a wounding from childhood that carried all the way across. In fact, it wasn't, it was then. But before that, the second thing that was a big breakthrough and beginning in 91, I think the first Macintosh computer came and I couldn't spell, um,'cause of the dyslexia, but the computer had a spell check and it liberated my mind. Oh wow. How beautiful. Yeah. Which just shows how tools can be Yeah, extraordinarily useful. Yeah. And then I started to do a lot of writing for my masters and my PhD and so, yeah. But yeah, second Saturn return, I went back into being a student again, actually. Right. High level. And it was a, yeah, it was a great. Great fight. I, I loved it. And a good, I think I did a good PhD. It was called, imaging the Void, and it was an inquiry into the presence in performance, formative photography and drawing. So it was all my passions so I could get all my passions into my inquiry. And so that was one of the happiest, you know, most fruitful times of my life. And that corresponded to, Neptune on my son. Oh, wow. At the same time. Oh wow. That makes me excited.'cause Neptune's about to come onto my son. Uh, yeah, well the elimination Oh wow.'cause it's, it's been, elimination a and hovering on my ascendant and just moved off it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh wow. I loved it as a transit and it's the rule of your chart anyway. Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. But, and also the other side of Neptune, it creates a real sensitivity of the body to be, you know, one has to really take care of the body under a Neptune transit because your whole nervous system and psychic system is sensitive. So, um, yeah, one of the things, you can get fully immersed in research and things like that, but coming back, taking care of the body, you know, Neptunes is one of the most strangest archetypal forces, I can't predict. It's how it will appear in life. It can be illuminating and create a new vision, and it also can create such sensitivities that can be really challenging for themselves. That's its nature, you know? And my experience of Neptune on my ascendant, I've had, trouble with my feet. Yeah. And Pisces is my ascendant. Yeah. So, and Pisces rules the feet. So, you know, astrology is so extraordinary. It's so comprehensive. And my right ankle, you know, is really where the challenge is. And and it's improving. Yeah. But it's slowly, slowly improving. And there's definitely since Neptune has moved off, my ascendant, what I'm feeling is, is this clarity, because Neptune dissolves and it can also create a lot of confusion. And you know what I realized, it's been 14 years in Pisces, and for 14, in these 14 years, I've earned very little money. Mm-hmm. But I have, I. Put together a huge body of work that I have been very shy about putting that into the world and now I really feel this is the time Yeah. Power for, to put it out into the world. Yeah. And, and that's such an interesting it's very subtle and it's also conjunct my moon, you know, so it's really, I feel it very deeply. Mm. Oh, that's super interesting. And, and of course, you know, when outer planets on one of the angles, massive. Yeah. Massive change. You know, that's a change in your reality structure. Do you want to explain what that is For people who, I see the chart, I, I like to see the first breath. Uh, as the beginning of the body and then the first house, uh, to, and the second house, uh, houses of the, of the, of the growing embodiment. And so you can see issues of the body often happen with the first and second houses. Third house is, we're starting to communicate. We're starting to talk. Fourth house is psychological at home. This fifth house, as we're getting creative expression, sixth house, we're starting to work seventh house relationships. So I see it as a, it nearly a physical unfoldment actually. Yeah. And I, you know, it's just one of the many ways to see it, but really in looking at issues of the body, I do look at first and second half. Yeah. Very much so. Very much so actually. Wow. Um, I love this conversation though. I love all our conversations. Um. I think it's appropriate to close at this point in time because you have an appointment and all of that. So is there anything that I haven't asked you and how, I suppose coming again back to how do you feel that you have been a benefactor of your future self? How are you feeling in that space of I, I've taken care of my who I was to become who I am and with the excitement for what's next. Mm-hmm. That's a big question. Uh, I think coming back to myself, like a lot of my orientation was orientating to how to survive my mother and my father. And so that had a, a hypersensitivity to it and the conditioning of, of loving somebody else and not being taught to love oneself and to take care of the other. So in my material life, it's really coming back from a whole other orientation that the other is the most important thing in my life, coming back to my own, uh, importance. So coming back to my own being. So it really is a movement away from seeing myself out there when all my intimate, relationships and things like that to coming back to the probably the hardest relationship of all was, which is the relationship with myself. With my own soul and my own psyche. You know, I think that's been the big maturing of me of really cracking this deep conditioning to think of the other before one soul. Because of the, you know, the, and then really embracing that, you know, a little bit of self, uh, focus or self narcissism is incredibly healthy, you know? Completely. Yes. So it, it was really, you know, breaking through some conditioning and patterns to how to come back to yourself and, and when you come back to what is the self you are coming back to, who is that? You know, for me it's just a, a quality of presence. Aware presence. and so that goes nearly beyond the archetypes, you know, because that goes to the center of the chart when you're just an aware presence and, that's the deep, so the radical essential self, uh, it's radical because it's, it's. It's, um, indestructible. Yeah. It's the center and it's undamaged before all the trauma, even in trauma in the womb, you know, a lot of people had that. Um, that there's a, quality, a deep fundamental quality in us that's before all the pain, all the wounding, even probably before conception, if you can take it back there. Because presence, awareness has no boundaries. You know, you, you can individuate it into a sense of, you know, what the diamond approach called the, what they call it, the pearly point. It's the, it is the pill beyond price and the point of light, which is the personal aspects within their archetypal model. And I like to come back that at a personal level and at a transpersonal level, you know, we're everything. And, and, and that's so beautiful because when you come back to the essence of Seth Yeah. You hold your own center. It's the space of self-responsibility. It's the space of that present is the presence. Yeah. It's this space of conscious awareness. It's the space of being awareness. Yeah. And we grew up in a society, like in Ireland, when you made a cup of tea for yourself, you were called a shin feer. Yeah. And a shin feer was somebody who only took care of themselves. Yeah. And so I think we're so conditioned Yeah. To look beyond for validation. In service of others. But the greatest, I mean, I really, I, unless you've fallen in love with those exotic liberal ascendants who have, uh, Aries on the cusp of the seventh house, they're very good at taking care of themselves and not very good at taking care of the other. It's, you know, it's how you are. Patterned it is how you and how you're culturally patented. Yes. You know, we're not taught to love ourselves. No, we're not. We're not taught to be creative. And, and they, they, they're not that taught. We have those qualities initially and we're conditioned out of them then, then the, you know, the spiritual challenges to bring those qualities back into that self, self-love, self-care, creativity, um, yeah. Self focus. You know, how do you love yourself? How do you nurture yourself? How can you feel compassionate to yourself? All of those qualities that we have to teach ourselves in adult life,'cause that we're not taught through the educational system. So it's massive. But that, yeah, self-love, self-worth second house then. But the second house is also, you're not very conscious in the second house. No, you're not.'cause consciousness really starts in the third house and that's which is why we need this unfolding spiral, essentially. Yeah. For, to bring us integrator self-love, integrate self worth. Yeah. And into self belonging. Yeah. Yeah. To the degree that you can love yourself, you can love another, yes. I thought I, in my early life, I hated myself and I passionately loved the others. Didn't quite work out. It worked out for a while. And it worked for them. Yeah. Worked, worked for that. And then I had to look at my own self-loathing actually, which is, you know, life is a continual exploration of one shadows. And so, yeah. And have you come to a place of self-love? Uh, uh Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a beautiful place to, self-loving, self lovingness that I can be, I think that's o ultimately it's a present continuous, it's an, I think it's the center. You know, initially I was a, I was a academic, so I was centered in my mind. Uh, and then, I didn't really have a, you know. Belly center that I've, I'm continually having to work on. But really my center is the heart. I think the heart center absorbs the mind center and the belly center up.'cause that's the loving component. And I, I'm all for, you know, I was into Sufi for a while, the notion of unconditional love. And I, I think this is the physical center of me now. Used to be my head. At one time it was my sexuality without the heart. Now it's the heart. It can give or take the head of the sexuality. But yeah, it's, I'm heart centered now. Whereas, you know, loving was a real issue'cause I didn't have experience of it, uh, when I was a kid. It's the biggest journey home to ourselves, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Self-love and, and love is creativity. You know, love, creativity. Same archetype, different expressions for me. Um, I think that's a beautiful place to close. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. It was delight. So you can find John at, diamond dialogue@gmail.com if you'd like to book a reading. Um, he's amazing, isn't he? So you've been listening to the discipline of freedom, a space where creative leaders come to evolve, not perform. And if you're ready to build a business and a life that reflects your next level, not just your last one, head to my website, eilish busier.com, to explore mentoring tools and programs that bring the material and mystical into strategic alignment. Now if you've got a question or a spiral of success story to share, I'd love to hear it. Please DM me on Instagram at eilish grier. I request a topic for a future episode. As you know, we're multidimensional here and so until next time. Keep showing up. Keep that spiral of success moving in the direction that's serving your higher self, and this is your time to lead beyond yourself. Thank you for listening. It's a delight to be here with you. And thank you to aod, who you can find on Spotify. This is their track called Skin. That's A-E-O-A-E-O-D.