SPECIAL EPISODE

Greetings,

Not for nothing, as they say in New Jersey, that as transiting Pluto squats atop the United States’ natal Pluto, do we see our government descending into chaos.

Pluto is classically associated with descent and chaos, as well as with debts and riches.

The God of the Underworld is also bringer of the utter destruction of what does not work, what hasn’t worked for some time, and what will definitely not serve anyone’s higher minded best interests as a new future takes root.

And so it is with our US government; it can no longer function. Putting aside the loftier questions about the veracity in theory and practice of our Constitution, the actual impracticality of our government is due to our lawmakers’ inability to agree who should have access to what resources, ,and to how much of them.

It leaves us to wonder, Who is indebted to whom and to what degree? And why?Also, who is funding those commitments?

Pluto will cease its current perceived reverse motion on October 10 in the Americas. After that, it will pull away from the degree of the US’s natal Pluto, not to return for approximately another 250 years. What is Pluto clearing out with this last flush?

That is where I want to focus our attention this week, but taking it to a much deeper, more personal level.

On this special episode (the last of the for a while, as there is a new segment begining soon — see below for more on that), I interview debt counseling specialist, Marie Megge. We have a look at our credit card and other debt, why and how the system has placed us in a situation where we are virtually crippled if we do not take on the debt, and we ask whether this system is working anymore for us, for the nation, for anyone. And if it does work for some, then what is our role in their successful use of our debt?

Best of all, if you are feeling the crush of debt, my guest can offer you hope for how to get out from underneath that rock.

Thank you for your patronage

Thanks to everyone who voiced their thoughts, mostly in private which I thought was interesting, about the end of Off the Charts. With one exception, the feedback was disappointed but decidedly suportive.

I promise that the new content will be just as intriguing, even if very different in tone. My plan is to unveil it to you at the New Moon, but I will tell you generally that it will combine astrology with my experiences in my “previous” life as a mental health policy reporter and academic psychiatry journal editor.

My aim is to indeed empower you with tools for facing the future as our national political discourse has, in my estimation, disintegrated to the point of there being no point in trying to resucitate it. As I have said on a couple of episodes of OTC before, democracy is dead. It is.

What’s next?

What will come after this implosion of ideals? I think something better. It will look more like democracy, but it will start from within each of us.

I am tired of being harangued with the VOTE OR DIE noise. We know that is not longer true; many of us do vote and while it does effect change, it’s not enough. It’s too easy to find yourself in the voting booth because you feel like you must identify with the “good people”.

But that’s lazy.

Voting without first cleaning out our own internal cobwebs is pointless. It still is you being manipulated. And while I am a proponent of fate beign just as powerful in our lives as fortuen (choice), you can’t make your fortune if you don’t come to terms with your fate. So, are you really voting consciously or are you doing what you’re told?

That is Pluto’s actual lesson to each of us: don’t look to others to clean up the dog s**t on the curb, when it’s your own dogs you haven’t trained.

So! I will be exploring how you can immediately use your chart and the patterns within it to reach beyond the conclusions of the mental health industry. I will be creating case studies to compare how astrology sees what the mental health “experts” need of your time, power, money, and attention to do for you.

I am not saying abandon your respective courses of treatment, but you probably long ago concluded you needed help, couldn’t get it, and now you have an app.

I hope to give you more insight than AI, but gosh, have you noticed that AI is actually pretty darn effective? More than I ever realized. So, with what is to come from the Ensouled Universe, plus what you’re already doing, I hope to empower you to stay home with your dogs before you unleash the hounds on the world.

Best of all you won’t need prior approval from a third party insurer to access the wisdom of your own gods and light patterns.

Peace,

Whitney PS: I will update the art and logo by then, too!

SPECIAL EDITION

Greetings,

Welcome to the third in a series of special co-production podcasts with docu-mental: mapping the american states of mind. This time, I am in conversation with renowned Tarotista, T. Susan Chang.

Susie, as she is known within the oracular community, opens our discussion about how the Tarot, with its 78 images of the archetypal and the mundane, can help us live a better life for ourselves and contribute more profoundly yet simply as citizens, with a reference to the Jungian concept of the ‘unus mundus’, or “one world.”

But first, we discuss how this Harvard-trained classicist came to be among the world’s most venerated “cross-over” experts on the Tarot and its connections to classical mythology.

My take-away from this bit of our chat is that when a democracy wants to, it sure can pump out some mighty fine thinkers from its public education system. Listening to this podcast is worth it just to hear Susie’s recollections of what it was like to attend a suburban New York high school in the 80s, where immigrants and dissident exiles were gathered together in one community (perhaps a foreshadowing of the “one world” we then go on to discuss).

If you’re not interested in the Tarot, or aren’t even sure what it is, no worries. We explain it, but either way, you will enjoy hearing how this critical thinker considers how to make meaning and metaphor from the stuff of life with or without the Tarot, and how you can, too.

It doesn’t require a deck of cards with 78 images, but a willingess to pause, observe, and be in relationship with each moment of your life.

However, if you are interested in using the Tarot, Susie and I discuss how to do so with courage — because meeting the Universe on its own terms takes just that — and brio. We also talk about how the Tarot helps us bridge the gap between our waking lives and our dream time where we spend at least a third of our lives.

We end our discussion where we began, with a reverie of what it is to be part of one collective whole, a common world of common thought and common emotion, even common evil, and what the implications of that are for us as individuals.

ICYMI: Other podcasts in this series

More Great Conversations from the Ensouled Universe

While Elisabeth and I are taking some time off from the newscast, you can catch up by listening to the Off the Charts archive. If you’d like more information about Elisabeth Grace and her weekly headlines forecast, visit her at Grace Astrology.

To learn more about me, Whitney McKnight, please visit me at Ensouled Astrology.

Thanks for listening.

Peace,

Whitney

SPECIAL EPISODE

Greetings,

You would not be wrong to count me among the astrologers who have proclaimed the ingress of Pluto into Aquarius as a time when power will shift to the people.

But what the heck does that mean, and if power isn’t already with the people, where is it then? And how did power get where we aren’t the ones who have it?

In this conversation with Australian astrologer, Cassandra Tyndall, I explore these questions and get Cass’s fresh, frank take on the Plutonic potentials for people to liberate themselves from trauma, from mind control, and from empire.

First things first, according to Cass: we must reckon with the ghosts that are returning, the pain points of colonialism, the secrecy hidden at the top of trickle-down templates. But also, we must admit our inability or unwillingness or both to take personal responsibility.

The problem, says Cass: “People aren’t ready to be challenged, yet.”

To that end, you might be surprised to hear our respective views on the cosmological underpinnings of “cancel culture” and how the next two decades of Pluto in Aquarius might not be as rosy and calm as some astrologers — myself included — have initially proclaimed. This conversation offers a peek at a recalibrated calculus of the steps we must dance if we’re to obtain the freedom we seek.

I am still certain we will get there, “there” being a place where we are liberated from our conditioned responses to see each other as other, and will instead just grow the f*ck up and get on with kindness and innovation, not anger and blame.

More likely, it will take these next 20 years to till and seed the ground for Pluto in Pisces when universality will be the astro-tone.

And we will then be ready to responsibly handle the power we say we want.

The inspiration for this interview comes from a YouTube video Cass released earlier this year, where she challenged the prevailing astrology community to reconsider that Pluto in Aquarius will not be all that we have thought, but will instead force us to confront the tremors of feudalism. It’s something we address in this interview.

This is a longer than usual podcast, and yet there was so much more we could have explored. Thankfully, Cass has agreed to return later this year. I hope you will be as excited as I am to welcome her now and in the near future to deliver her take on the news from the Ensouled Universe.

To learn more about Cassandra’s work: CassandraTyndall.com

Bits and bobs

Substack is offering me the option to try a transcript of this talk. I am going to use it, cautiously, because if ever I have had prototypical Mercury in retrograde problems in producing my podcasts, this was the week that kicked my ass. You will hear it in the production of my audio (Cass’s is brilliant, mine not so much); the breakdown of my little make-shift podcast studio is forcing me to reconsider how I do these, but that is the magic of Mercury turning inward, so it’s a net positive, I say.

Regardless, I haven’t figured out how to edit the transcript before I post it, nor can I figure how to edit it and then post it. I also can’t see where it says it is being posted, but it should be on the podcast page. If not, well, count me as scunnered.

So, I am going to fly without a net and agree with the AI prompting to post it, hope it shows up, and then if it does and I figure out how to edit it, I will do so, then re-post the corrected version, as I already can see there are some things appearing a bit off in the copy I was sent by the AI lords.

Still to come…

T. SUSAN CHANG

Also to come while Off the Charts is on hiatus, is a disscussion with the astoundingly polymathic T. Susan Chang, whose approach to her many disciplines, which range from policymaking to sewing Tarot-themed comforters, to teaching creative writing, to cooking, and more, is derived in part from her Classics training at Harvard University.

Although Susie’s voice might be familiar to many in this audience as a food commentator and cookbook reviewer at NPR, we’ll primarily be discussing her expertise in archetypal mythology as made practical for every day living through her latest book, The Living Tarot.

My hope is that our discussion will give you ideas for how to reframe our quotidien existence, with all its trials as well as triumphs, as an endless psychodrama where we encounter ourselves by way of encountering the Gods.

Use the Substack app for easy navigation of all your favorite content

The Substack app aggregates all your Substack interests in one place. And if you have any questions, you can contact me through this email and I will be happy to help out, too.

Here’s the link to download the app:

Be sure to search for the Ensouled Universe to find all our content on Substack.

More Great Conversations from the Ensouled Universe

While Elisabeth and I are taking some time off from the newscast, you can catch up by listening to the Off the Charts archive. If you’d like more information about Elisabeth Grace and her weekly headlines forecast, visit her at Grace Astrology.

To learn more about me, Whitney McKnight, please visit me at Ensouled Astrology.

Thanks for listening.

Peace,

Whitney

News from the Ensouled Universe is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

vol. 2 Episode 47

Greetings,

Our top stories: Hawaii on fire, private equity does an end-run around the Department of Justice with an all-cash purchase of major publishing house Simon and Schuster, the USWNT are out of the World Cup, Ohio voters reject manipulating the people’s will with culture wars, and there are major security breaches everywhere.

What are the planetary patterns that signal these were coming and that they arrived right on time? Elisabeth has the report.

But we also continue our conversation about the astrological inflection point symbolized by the record-breaking ticket sales of director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Why now? Why this particular director? Is it related to other themes about women such as the attack on reproductive rights?

vol. 2 Episode 46

Greetings,

There used to be a comedy show on BBC Radio Scotland called Swots that skewered geeks, and which used to make me laugh until it hurt.

One sketch has stayed with me all these years because its humor was based in a larger truth, making it both profound, and profoundly funny.

The punch line was that there are four potential outcomes in a Scottish court trial: guilty, not guilty, unproven, and “he had it coming”.

In fact, Scottish jurisprudence has three potential trial outcomes, and “he had it coming” isn’t one of them. But in life, this is arguably a valid verdict.

I was reminded of this bit of satire as I edited this episode, filled with Elisabeth’s and my parsing of the latest indictment against former president Donald Trump. Honestly, to me, he is so boring because he is so transparent. I know that to say a megalomaniac with blood on his hands is “boring” sounds flippant, but hear me: his narcissism is boring.

The maliciousness for which he stands in the cosmic order of things, and the fantasies of deliverance that so many human beings have attached to him, are not boring.

They represent a larger question of what exactly is justice.

The distillation of this new indictment essentially is that Trump knew he’d lost and so his intent was indeed to stage a coup and overthrow a democratically elected president, namely Joe Biden. For the prosecution to prove this will require demonstrating that Trump isn’t insane, isn’t deluded, but is indeed calculating and criminal.

To me, he is all of these things — a sad, mad, raging orange puppet of some secret cabal of angry power mongers who are both led by and leading others around by the dollar signs.

Still, Trump’s most potent weapon isn’t the money. It’s not even his sociopathy, which makes lying and cheating easy.

It’s his ability to convince people he is special because he tells them they are special. His power, like that of any narcissist resides in the fantasy of being separate and apart and better than everyone else. Including, above the law.

Clearly, I believe the correct verdict is that he is guilty, and he should go to federal prison for life. I am not convinced that will happen, but the stars do suggest to me he will die ignominiously.

So, is that justice?

Well, pulling back the lens a moment, I wonder, what does Trump going to prison for crimes committed say about people who believed in the fantasy of specialness? Are they insane but he is not?

Perhaps one outcome does not have to be true at the expense of the other. But it does beg the question of mass insanity vs. mass enchantment. Yet, to enchant so many people so thoroughly requires some ballsy calculation, doesn’t it?

There is a maxim in astrology that the stars do not compel, but they do impel.

With that in mind, even if Trump was compos mentis throughout the entirety of his plotting a coup/plotting a restoration of his rightful place throne, I mean, White House, what does astrology say about the event having even taken place at all?

Because mundane astrologers such as Elisabeth and myself and many others foresaw some kind of Plutonic disaster befalling the US beginning with the 2020 eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn (those were my touchstones, anyway), we could say that “we had it coming”.

I note with interest that both prior to his taking office, and now that he is out of office, the national conversation is on Trump’s mental state. Before taking office, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals were at one another’s throats over whether to diagnose him from afar as a clinical narcissist, a clear and present danger to the world.

There has never been consensus, or even a plausible clinical explanation of the man’s mental state, even if there is strong opinion about his guilt or innocence. Whether there even is such a thing as clinical narcissism is still debated.

One valid take-away from the Trump phenomenon is that clinical mental health diagnoses are deeply flawed, and are in fact simply our vapidly materialistic way of pivoting away from the problems created when soul and spirit are drained from how we view and address imbalances of heart and mind.

Are all supporters of Trump insane? Or are they deluded fantasists? What if they are duped, yet good?

And yet, the Trump era brought the eruption of our national evil under-belly from below the belt line. Trump didn’t cause that. He helped us uncover it. It was already there. It has always been there. Will it forever be there?

Which makes me think about this as a collective, philosophical moment in both our national history, and that of the world where plenty of other liars and crooks are living large among us in positions of leadership over us.

Remember that Pluto brings about the extreme of extremes. In my own practice, I counsel clients that things involving Pluto will be hard. Very. Hard. Sure, it also means that things will get scrubbed clean of all the detritus, but who wants to get brushed with a cactus?

And yet, when the gunk is gone, the power remains, is even more powerful for the lack of the crap. What to do with such a depth of resources? This might be a good problem to have post-Trump, provided we have admitted our individual role in the blight having been allowed to fester. And we each do have one. That’s what makes the Oedipal story, unsullied by that weirdo Freud, so important to understand: what is seemingly beyond our control is still ours to face, even if we actively tried to avoid it.

In short: take life on its own terms and accept that sometimes, evil arrives at your doorstep and you have to call it what it is, not give it a prescription.

And so, I ask: was Trump the president we deserved, or the president we needed? It depends on how you view justice, karmically and morally.

That’s what makes astrology such the font of living waters I find it to be: it helps us map the seemingly inchoate worlds of karmic and moral justice, bridging them together, and carrying us from one to another, but sometimes allowing us to stand with one foot in each land of Fate and Fortune.

Because we collectively have been apathetic, ignorant of our richness as a democracy, mistaking it for a marketplace, Trump could be viewed as our fortune — this is what we sowed and now must reap.

But we have also been duped by the invisible forces of power mongers behind the scenes, such as we are finding out drip by grungy drip, as the spooky powers of people like the über creepy Leonard Leo’s hold over the Supreme Court is evermore uncovered.

This trial will now occur months after the planets have eased off the pressure points of our national birth chart, all but of course, Pluto, which will apply its thumbs to our nation’s soul map for another 2-ish years to come.

And isn’t it just a little suspicious that the man’s name is also synonymous with “archetype”, as Jungians and Tarotistas well know? Yes, it’s not his “real” name, but maybe his role was to bring archetypal powers to our attention.

Which also makes me wonder: what if it’s a question of that ensouled universal principal of life that impels itself forward by way of moving through us knowing that with a few squares here, a couple of oppositions there, and more than a few eclipse cycles, we humans could be roused to become better beings who wouldn’t stand for a messianic madman, clinical or otherwise?

Is that our random choice or engaging with the gods for better outcomes?

Guilty, not guilty, unproven, no matter — I submit, Trump is both our fate and our fortune. We had it coming.

Also in this episode…

* Sabian Symbol mentioned by Elisabeth

* Elisabeth’s analysis of Ginni Thomas’s chart, and the coming stress upon it

* The Henrietta Lacks settlement

* Endemic leprosy in Florida

Use the Substack app for easy navigation of all OTC content

The Substack app is, I will say it, so much better than Spotify or iTunes to use. It aggregates all your Substack interests in one place and the tech people are responsive if you have any concerns. And if you have any questions, you can contact me through this email and I will be happy to help out, too.

And also, as a patron subscriber the app is where you can easily access the premium audio outtakes.

Here’s the link to download the app:

Be sure to search for the Ensouled Universe to find all our content on Substack.

Thanks for being a subscriber!

If you’d like to learn more about the forecast used in this podcast, visit Elisabeth’s home page, elisabethgrace.com. To learn more about me and my work, it’s ensouledastrology.com.

xWhitney (and Elisabeth, too!)

vol. 2 Episode 45

Greetings,

It’s hot, hot, hot.

Israel is hot. The US is hot. Bidenomics is hot. Trumpaganza in court is hot.

We keep it hot in this episode, even though we acknowledge there is blue sadness in the air with the death of Sinéad O’Connor, and the cold crush of Saturn moving in on Mitch McConnell.

Elisabeth has a thorough and thoughtful astrological analysis of the current political unrest in Israel, offering her forecast for the next two years covering that region.

We also discuss WT(actual)F is up with the new public school curriculum about slavery in Florida, where lion-headed bunnies have overtaken the streets right on time for Venus retrograde, plus a brief but informative technical discussion on the nature of cazimi planets, such as Venus will be soon.

Trumpa-‘losah’

We didn’t actually cover the lastest indictment against the felonious former US president Trump in Episode 45, in part because we had wrapped before he got rapped (again), but also because I am sick of him sucking up all the oxygen. He’s a crook. We know it. Let justice be done, and I have faith, because the stars suggest it, that it will. In his case anyway.

Astrology aside, odds are good in Justice’s favor, considering that at this point, with the latest revelations that Trump tried to erase security footage of his theft of national security documents, there are now 40 federal charges against the Don, this time indicating, gasp!, a cover-up of how the man was trading on our lives to enrich himself and I suppose, his secret backers.

I do want to note, however, that as per usual in these Pluto Capricornus times, it’s the little guy being made to take the fall for the Big Guy, but with Pluto at the 29th all-or-nothing degree, this might just prove how the Big Guy collapses once and for all. And I do mean, for all.

Use the Substack app for easy navigation of all OTC content

Apple/iTunes continues to act like they are too big to care, so if you are experiencing issues with your feed of OTC on iTunes, again, I strongly suggest using the Substack app instead. It aggregates all your Substack interests and isn’t obnoxious. Also, the tech people actually help you if you need it. And if you have any questions, you can contact me through this email and I will be happy to help out, too.

And also, as a patron subscriber the app is where you can easily access the premium audio outtakes.

Here’s the link to download the app:

vol. 2 Episode 44

Greetings,

We know AI isn’t going away, so how do we live in a world where it — and not us — increasingly determines our individual “identity”?

You won’t get hard and fast answers on that in this episode, but you will get some food for thought.

Plus, what does the simultaneous release of the films Oppenheimer and Barbie have to say about our world right now? We interrogate what astrology has to say about that.

And I make a couple of corrections and offer perspective on a past prediction that is still evolving.

Use the Substack app for easy navigation of all OTC content

I like using the Substack app because it aggregates all of my Substack interests as both a publisher and a reader, making it easy and efficient to manage this newsletter, as well as follow my favorite fellow-stackers. It also helps me track if there are any Notes threads developing that I want to follow, similar to Twitter threads, but without the Elon.

And in case as a patron subscriber you want the ease of having a place to collect and stream not just all the OTC episodes, but the premium audio outtakes, the app will aggregate it all in one place so you don’t need to switch between platforms.

Here’s the link to download it:

Thanks for being a subscriber!

We are thrilled you’re along for the ride. If you’d like to learn more about the forecast used in this podcast, visit Elisabeth’s home page on the internet, that’s elisabethgrace.com. To learn more about me and my work, it’s ensouledastrology.com.

To become a paid subscriber, here’s how to do so:

xWhitney (and Elisabeth, too!)

vol. 2 Episode 43

Greetings,

After a sorely needed week off, Elisabeth and I are back with the astro-headlines. This time, we debate which ones you should even care about.

A child rapist in Tennessee? Or, climate change? Both? Neither…?

It’s true, now that I am living in a far more wild environment than Washington…

vol. 2 Episode 42

Greetings,

As predicted last episode, this summer will take a sweet turn toward justice as planetary patterns are in support of preserving the democratic process, justice for all, and the power of the vote. We discuss the recent US Supreme Court’s rejection of the independent legislature theory

In astrological terms, we’re seeing how the coming two decades of Pluto in Aquarius just will not support the the purchase of certain justices fiddling around with themselves beneath those robes in that marble palace.

We also explore the intrigue surrounding the mercenary mutiny that was, then wasn’t, as the Wagner Group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, comes for Russian president, Vladimir Putin, then changes his mind. Do planetary patterns suggest the warlord might have suckered Putin out of munitions?

Regardless, what planetary patterns do suggest is that the mutiny was “too early” to take down Putin. But Elisabeth shares dates when over the next year Russia’s President-for-Life, might find that lifespan shortened. That is, if the birth time we have for him is correct.

And I want to know what the heck is the big deal about US President Joe Biden’s age, when the expected GOP 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump is only three years younger and a lot less fit and trim.

Don’t forget: use the Substack app for best results!

For listeners who’ve had difficulty finding us on sundry podcast platforms, it seems the best solution is to download and listen to us on the Substack app. That is especially true if you’d like to have access to extras like the conversation referenced above. I personally use the app and find it is bug-free (well, I haven’t encountered any), and has a great support team behind it, as I discovered when investigating a few tech issues for subscribers.

Here’s the link to download it:

To learn more about the forecast used in this podcast, visit Elisabeth’s home page on the internet, that’s elisabethgrace.com. To learn more about me and my work, it’s ensouledastrology.com.

If you’re not already a patron subscriber, please consider becoming one. And if that is not something you can do right now, please share us with others and leave comments here or on the podcast platform where you listen.

Thanks for your support!

xWhitney (and Elisabeth, too!)

vol. 2 episode 41

Greetings,

We know that the news is papered with the tragedy of the imploded submersible as it sought to explore the Titanic.

which we do cover...

(moment of silence)

There are some rather alarming astrological explanations for that, as Elisabeth explains in this episode.

However, as we also discuss, there is …