On the Soul's Terms

The Planets Series begins with our closest and most intimate neighbour: the moon. 
The moon represents the dreaming mind, our instinctive life and our guidance system to the emotional waves of our turbulent lives. 
Each of these elements of the moon is explored in this episode with the help of three mythic figures:
Selene as a personification of the moon riding her white cow through the sky, visiting her lover Endymion (one who finds himself within) in his cave as he dreams the eternal dream.
Artemis as the wild, instinctual life that stays true to her nature and close to her essence. 
and Hekate, the triple goddess, who has her home in the underworld. It's Hekate who arrives in our most desperate times of need to accompany us in the realm of grief and loss. 
The second half of the podcast begins with the image of Grimm's Hansel staring longingly back at his home as he's taken into the woods by his step-mother to be abandoned. He drops white stones on the ground that are then lit up by the moonlight to guide him back home. 
From there we visit Mnemosyne's cellular memory, the thread-weavers and the way Ithaka pulls at Odysseus.
The Gorgons, including Medusa, will help us relate to the moments we feel unrelatable. There are many links between Medusa, the ocean and the moon. Including the Orphics calling the moon's face the Gorgoneion.
And finally Rilke with some soul-soothing words in his poem 'You Come and Go'.
Cover Art: Endymion : Effet de lune, ou Le Sommeil d’Endymion (The Sleep of Endymion), Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, 1791.
I leant heavily on Gods of the Greeks, Carl Kerenyi, 1951
Very thankful to Brian Clark, Melanie Reinhart, Travis Elliot and Milena Kadziela for their help in the creation of this podcast.
For my German audience... The poem at the end from Rilke:
Du kommst und gehst
Du kommst und gehst. Die Türen fallen
 viel sanfter zu, fast ohne Wehn.
 Du bist der Leiseste von allen,
 die durch die leisen Häuser gehn.
Man kann sich so an dich gewöhnen,
 daß man nicht aus dem Buche schaut,
 wenn seine Bilder sich verschönen,
 von deinem Schatten überblaut;
 weil dich die Dinge immer tönen
 nur einmal leis und einmal laut.
Oft wenn ich dich in Sinnen sehe,
 verteilt sich deine Allgestalt;
 du gehst wie lauter lichte Rehe,
 und ich bin dunkel und bin Wald.
Du bist ein Rad, an dem ich stehe:
 von deinen vielen dunklen Achsen
 wird immer wieder eine schwer
 und dreht sich näher zu mir her,
 und meine willigen Werke wachsen
 von Wiederkehr zu Wiederkehr.

 
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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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I disappeared for a few months, went a bit underground, and even partially relocated my life to Greece so I could be a little closer to the gods I keep talking about. Now I’m ready to return with something simple, specific, and surprisingly alive: a new astrology podcast series on the planets, approached as characters of the psyche rather than abstract symbols on a page.

If the houses are the places where the saga of a life unfolds, the planets are the ones living it. I’ve been thinking of them less like an internal family system and more like an internal solar system, each planet representing a different part of the self with its own aims, needs, and ways of moving. We’ll take an imaginal voyage through the horoscope, stopping at one planet or luminary at a time, experimenting with what it feels like to become the Moon with its craters and shadow, the Sun with its heat and power, and Mercury with its fast, message-carrying urgency.

Myth will be one of our main guides. Because the planets share names with Greco-Roman figures, their stories give us a rich way to watch archetypes behave: who allies with whom, what gets opposed, and how a planet’s gifts can become traps when they run the inner world unchecked. The order of the series follows the Sun’s movement through the zodiac, exploring the ruler of the sign we’re in, beginning next week with the Moon as ruler of Cancer, then the Sun for Leo, then Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, plus a bonus planet and a special guest.

As usual, I’ll be joined by guests to explore each planetary archetype. We start with my dear friend, colleague, and mentor Melanie Reinhart for the lunar conversation. If you’d like to go deeper, paid Patreon members can join a monthly reflective Zoom call to ask questions about personal placements and continue the threads we leave open. Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find this mythic astrology journey.
* My words here underwent a clean up from Buzzsprout's AI.
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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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The series on the houses wouldn't have felt complete without one last fairytale. 
In this, the 40th and last episode of the series, we explore the German tale of Dornröschen, which loosely translates to 'the little rose inside the thorns'. 
It begins with a talking frog who crawls out of the water to deliver a prophecy to the bathing queen. And it takes us into those places in ourselves that feel dormant. We feel that these parts have such great potential in our lives, but they remain fast asleep. 
Until...
Well, that's the thing. The story takes us into the element of timing, of transits, of progressions, of gestation and of waiting until that which slumbers is ready to arouse. 
I'm joined in a very synchronous way by Milena Kadziela, a fellow astrologer and psychotherapist. She sends a transmission from London, in the middle of the night, on the Libra Full Moon. The moon was at 12°, which is the 13th degree.
Milena, a listener to the show, felt that the one element that was missing in the series was that of the intercepted house. It happens that she uses this very story, Briar Rose, to speak to those hard to access parts of the chart. 
And so, she joined us for a late cameo in the episode to drop her night wisdom on us all. 
If you'd like to find out more about Milena's work you can find her here. 
You can read the story itself here.
The image for the podcast is again from Artist and Patron, Lucy Dodd. Her work is also featured on episode 124 with Melanie Reinhart. 
With an overlaid princess from a 1981 edition of La Belle Au Bois Dormant & Autres Contes Merveilleux (Sleeping Beauty & Other Wonderful Tales), published by Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri and Hachette.
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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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My guest for this episode is... well... me!
Astrologer Brian Clark interviews me, Chris Skidmore, in this episode as we look back on the journey that was the 12 Houses of Astrology. In no particular order, we move back through the images that captured our attention from the fairy tales, and revisit our 13 guests that helped us along the way. 
Thank you to all of you who have come along with me in the sacred role of 'audience'... it's your listening that makes this possible. 
Special shout out here to all of my wonderful guests. Find our more about their work by clicking their links:
Brian Clark: www.astrosynthesis.com.au
Cameron Allen: www.cadreamplanet.com
Collette Davis: www.collettedavis.com
Melanie Reinhart: melaniereinhart.com
Vive Oldham: www.viveandco.com
Libby Rose Waite: libbyrosewaite.com
Kira Sutherland: www.astrologyofhealth.com
Ryan Nielsen: www.yourveryownlife.com
Travis Elliott: travisjelliott.com
Amanda Simon: amandasimon.co.uk
Thomas Moore: www.thomasmooresoul.com
Michael Meade: www.mosaicvoices.org
Jason Holley: jasonholley.net

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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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Melanie Reinhart joins me once more to speak into and from the 12th house of the wheel of houses. The episode itself is a wonderful example of how that which we talk about can sometimes be 'conjured up' by our speech. This is something that Gregory Bateson called a 'metalogue' - a word introduced to me by Melanie many moons ago. 
Our metalogue was a disruption from the gods of technology who seemed to think that some of what we shared was best kept in silence. And so we were kicked off the call at a particularly poignant moment in this one. 
None-the-less, the essence of the house was thoroughly explored. And we share with you whatever the deities allow us to reveal. 
This completes our 'series within a series' on the water houses - those elusive and hard to grasp places of reality. I'm forever grateful to Melanie for her generosity of spirit in sharing her depth of wisdom with us on the podcast. 
The image for the podcast cover is from Patron of the show, Lucy Dodd. It's a piece she calls "Sun Moon and Mermaid" made with, in her words, 'Iron oxide and Copper ink, blue spirulina, cochineal and some other stuff.' 
She completed it just as our Iron John episodes were released. 
REFERENCES
Authors & Thinkers
Gregory Bateson
→ Concept of metalogue
→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson

Carl Jung
→ Concept of the numinous
→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous

Dane Rudhyar
→ The Astrological Houses: The Spectrum of Individual Experience (also published as New Mansions for New Men)

David Abram
→ Cultural perception / reality frameworks
→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abram

C. A. Meier
→ Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy (republished as Healing Dream and Ritual)

Brian Clark
→ Rewilding the psyche (concept referenced)
Mythological Sources & Figures
Hyginus
→ Fabulae (mythographical fragments)

Dionysus
→ Greek god of ecstasy, twice-born myth
→ https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Dionysos.html

Asclepius
→ Greek god of healing and incubation temples
→ https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Asklepios.html

Ariadne
→ Associated with Dionysus, labyrinth, and Corona Borealis

River Lethe & Mnemosyne
→ Rivers of forgetfulness and memory in the underworld

Chiron & Chariklo
→ Centaur healer and his consort (associated with weaving/spinning)

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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.